Wild Power
by Flamedancer33
Summary: “There is still power in this world, John,” she said softly. “And there are still people who know how to use it.” AU, eventual McShep
1. Thursday

BECAUSE I CAN!

Ahem. I apologize for that, I just had a brief desire to explain myself. Obviously I fail. Moving on.

SGA is not a new-new fandom for me, I just kinda took a four-and-a-half year break from it. Yeah, I suck. Also, I'm not normally fond of writing AU's like this, mostly because I live in morbid fear of screwing up completely. But I shall try.

This entire fic is dedicated to those evil people like me who watched Intruder and, upon the 'I shot him in the leg' line, were immediately swamped by images of Sheppard and McKay going at it like bunnies.

disclaimer: me no own nothin'. le sigh.

---

Chapter One- Thursday - _a prologue of sorts_

The day John Sheppard's life changed completely started out as one of the worst days he'd had in a long string of bad days.

It was a Thursday, and in the immortal words of Arthur Dent, he had never really gotten the hang of Thursdays. Had John honestly stopped to think about it, he probably would have realized that everything that had ever drastically changed his life always happened on a Thursday. This one started out miserably wet and cold- not rainy enough to justify staying inside, yet rainy enough to slowly but steadily plaster his clothes to his skin and suck every shred of warmth out of his body. A passing minivan, complete with Proud To Be A Soccer Mom bumper sticker, hit a muddy puddle at just the right angle and speed to soak him from shoulder to waist. A flock of those hateful little demons- known by most people as pigeons- used him as projectile-crap target practice. A kid down the street kicked a soccer ball at him hard enough that it probably would have gelded him had he not seen it coming and turned at the last second; as it was, he was going to have a nice big bruise on his left hip.

By the time he made it to the store, he was ready to chalk the whole day up as a lost cause and head back to bed, and it was barely ten am.

He stopped just outside the door, staring blankly at the hiring sign hanging crookedly in the window. Beyond the foggy glass he could see cases of gently-used books, shelved with an almost obsessive sense of order. The store itself would smell like old books and paper and ink and a faint underlying hint of whatever candle or incense the owner would be burning in the back, because that was how all used book stores were. John had only been in a handful in his life, and most times it was only to walk in, grab one particular book, and walk out again. He couldn't honestly say why he was here, except he needed a job and the store was hiring and it all somehow felt _right_. As if he'd been drawn here like a metal filing to a magnet.

The door opened just enough for a woman to poke her head through and pin John down with a look. "Are you coming in?" she asked pointedly. She sounded like a teacher taking the class clown to task for shooting spitballs. John immediately ducked his head and tossed her his troublemaker's grin- an instant regression to his high school years. She merely arched an eyebrow and pushed the door open wide enough for him to come in.

"Elizabeth Weir," she offered him as she circled around behind the counter. She produced a fuzzy towel- thankfully a non-offensive beige color- and tossed it to him. She was a few years older than him and carried herself with a surety that was almost overwhelming. Her keen dark eyes were direct and unwavering and made him instinctively pull out of his slouch and meet her gaze head-on. She would make a good mother, he thought abstractly. Or a good general.

"John Sheppard," he answered in turn as he scrubbed at his hair with the towel. He saved the drawl and the smile for a better time, as it was obvious Elizabeth wouldn't be impressed by his little-boy charm. "I saw your ad in... in the, uh, paper..."

Elizabeth folded both hands on the counter in front of her and studied him with a frank, assessing gaze. He felt as though she wasn't looking at him so much as through him, as though she could see straight through to the battered soul under the layers and masks.

"In the paper, yes," she said easily. "And you thought you'd stop by to see if we were still hiring. A stopover job, of course, nothing permanent."

"Uh," John replied intelligently. Before he could figure out how to respond to that, she continued.

"The job is only available for a few weeks. After that I have an out-of-town friend who might be able to use your help. Are you willing to travel?"

"Where to?" Here, an actual question. He'd been seriously starting to wonder if she even knew how to ask one. Vaguely he thought of Denver, or perhaps Colorado Springs. He was therefore understandably surprised by her answer.

"Vancouver."

"Vancouver? Wow, really out-of-town. Uh, well, we'll see." He shrugged and carefully folded himself into his familiar slouch, hands tucked into his back pockets. Had he been the introspective type he might have realized that he was, as he often did, using his poor posture as a sort of defensive barrier.

"Have you ever worked in a book store before?" Another question, although this one had the feel of being asked for company's sake. She already knew the answer. Hell, anyone who took one look at him knew the answer.

"Nope."

"Very well. If you'll follow me, in the back here there's several boxes of books. I need them sorted according to genre and alphabetized by the author's name." She led him into the back, pointing out three dishwasher-sized cardboard boxes overflowing with books. John tried not to whimper at the thought of sorting through all that. Instead, he turned to address Elizabeth, only to find her back out front again.

"Hey," he called up. She turned to regard him, one eyebrow going up again. It was a _you're about to ask a stupid question and I'm being extremely patient by letting you_ look. John ignored it and forged ahead. "Don't you want me to fill out an application or give you a reference or something?"

"Do you want to?" she countered. He gaped at her, fighting off the sudden urge to bolt. There was something going on here, he could feel it. There was far more to Elizabeth than she was letting on. He just couldn't tell what it was.

Whatever it was, it was creepy as hell, but somehow she didn't seem dangerous. He forced himself to shrug it off- a job was a job. As long as it got him a paycheck he couldn't afford to complain.

"I'm fine," he said easily, turning to face the boxes. This was going to take forever, he thought wryly. At least the store was warm, although that only caused his muddy, clingy shirt to feel that much colder against his skin.

"John?" Elizabeth called back, and he started in surprise. "There's a box of shirts back there. If you want to take one, you can, I'm pretty sure there's one in your size."

He glanced at her, then at the towel he was still holding- beige, not some girly pink, which somehow felt wrong, somehow felt as if she'd had it waiting specifically for him- and then over at the box under the table in the far corner. The sweatshirts were thick and warm and dry and didn't even have some cute cat or something on them. He pulled out one in his size and stared at it.

After a moment's contemplation he peeled his shirt off and grabbed for the towel again. _Just don't think about it_, he told himself. Familiar advice. The towel passed over his dog tags, wet and cold like two chips of ice resting over his heart, and he forced his mind away from that path. Instead he thought about sorting books and wondering how he planned on putting off his current landlord until his first paycheck came in.

Thus began the Thursday that change John Sheppard's life.

---

That Thursday, more people than just John found their lives changing dramatically. In fact, of all the major players in this particular game, the only one who didn't find their life taking a sudden off-ramp into the unknown was Elizabeth Weir. She knew what was coming. She was prepared for it. That was, after all, the point of Knowing.

She had shooed John out at five minutes after six, sending him away loudly protesting both the shirt she insisted he keep and the twenty dollar bill she had given him. He had stood just outside the door, under the store awning, trying to get her to take back the money at least. It had taken a considerable amount of effort to get him to accept the gifts. Eventually she had told him to take the money as a down payment on what would likely be some of the most boring weeks of his life, as she had nothing but sorting and shelving for him to do. He'd looked vaguely horrified at that and Elizabeth, taking advantage of his distraction, had gently closed the door in his face.

If he came back the next day she'd make him fill out an application and the appropriate tax forms. He mistrusted her and she needed him to trust her if she was to help him. The familiar drudgery of paperwork ought to help in that department.

Before she could do that, however, she needed help. Knowing was all well and good, but it had taken all of her resources just to get him here. Protecting him, keeping him hidden, was well beyond her. Sending him off to a Keeper wasn't an option just yet, especially since Keepers tended to required several weeks' warning before random strangers were foisted onto him. The last thing she needed was her Keeper- normally hostile at best- chasing John away with his snarls and glares.

Elizabeth allowed herself a fond smile at the thought. Rodney McKay was definitely an acquired taste. If he wasn't so good at what he did, he probably would have been cast out years ago. However, not only was he the best Keeper in North America, he was also easily the most technologically savvy of their little group- an important survival trait in the twenty-first century.

The phone she was resting her hand on started to ring. She picked it up and answered with a crisp 'hello?' before it completed its first shrill cry. She had let it ring two or three times when John had been there.

"You said it would happen today," Evan Lorne said without preamble. He sounded doubtful. Everything worth having had a price, and Knowing came with the price of the occasional Cassandra complex. Even those who knew better sometimes doubted her. It wasn't a rational thing; it was more an instinctive denial that occasionally overpowered logical thought. She didn't begrudge them this, as instinct played a much larger part in their lives as they did in the unaware.

"It did. He was here. You missed him by three minutes." She tucked her feet under her chair and picked at the beige towel John had used. Normally the towel kept under her counter for emergencies was rose pink.

"The one who just left?" Lorne asked disbelievingly. Elizabeth stood and walked over to the front of her store. She hadn't realized Lorne was watching her store but his comment made it pointless to ask if he was. "That's what all the fuss is for? What do you know about him?"

"John Sheppard, age thirty-six, served in the Air Force," she answered calmly. "Other than that, I can't tell you much. He doesn't talk much and I don't read minds."

"And you didn't ask? The man was in your store for seven hours."

"Six. I sent him out to get Burger King for lunch." Elizabeth smiled serenely as Lorne grunted. They both knew Sheppard was no danger to her- even trained assassins were no danger to her, those who Knew rarely died premeditated deaths- but Lorne was also a military man and this whole scenario just rubbed him wrong.

"What do you plan on doing with him?" he asked finally. Elizabeth sighed and headed back over to the counter.

"Give him a few weeks for his power to settle. Then you and Teyla will take him up north to our Keeper. He'll be safe there until someone can train him."

"You're handing him over to McKay? What'd he do to piss you off?" Lorne snorted a laugh. Then he paused as realization sunk in. "Uh, wait- you're not expecting us to stay up there too, are you?"

"You'll be fine, Evan," Elizabeth said. "Just stay away from Rodney. He'll probably be having too much fun tormenting John to bother with you. It's been a long time since Rodney's had to deal with someone who's unaware."

That was due to the fact that Rodney McKay was easily the world's worst liar. They simply couldn't trust him to keep his mouth shut. So both their network- a group of the aware that had no real name and of which Elizabeth was one of the leaders- and Rodney himself had put a moratorium on outside visitors. His only contact was with people in the network, and even that was narrowed down significantly to the small handful of people who could tolerate him. Sometimes Elizabeth worried that he was becoming a recluse. Other times she admitted that there was no 'becoming'- he was already there and had made himself quite at home.

"Right," Lorne didn't sound convinced. "I'm going to see what I can find out about this Sheppard. You probably need to call Teyla. The store's wards aren't strong enough for this."

"I plan on it," Elizabeth replied. She briefly considered having Teyla ward Sheppard himself, then discarded the idea. Better to keep him unaware for as long as possible; it was the only defense he had right now.

"And Elizabeth?" He paused, trying to find the right words. "Just... good luck, all right?"

There was power in those simple words. Like her, Lorne couldn't actively control his power, but it always came through for him when he really wanted it to. It was a simple good-luck charm but it had strength; had she been a less ethical person, she would have taken advantage of it and gone to the casino. Naturally this would mean she would burn through the luck faster, but given the strength behind the words, she could easily end up taking home a couple hundred thousand. That was, if they let her through the door. Most successful casino owners had someone watching closely for those sorts of charms.

There were people like that, mostly politicians and police detectives; people who were half-aware. People who subconsciously knew of the existence of powers beyond the normal but never consciously acknowledged them. John Sheppard was one of them and as such had to be handled with care.

Elizabeth wished Lorne luck as well, her own words carrying no power save sincerity, and hung up. Then she dialed the phone for Teyla Emmagan, their local Warder. She needed to improve the wards, as Lorne had suggested. She also Knew, the moment she had said goodbye to Lorne, that Rodney would not be answering his phone.

The conversation with Teyla ended with the younger woman promising to set out for the store immediately. Elizabeth heated some chamomile tea and wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic mug, gazing thoughtfully out into the drear beyond.

Things were in motion now, and even she couldn't tell how this would all end.

---

At six-thirty-two CMT, John Sheppard was buying himself a three-pack of instant ramen so he would have a spare five dollars with which to stave off his landlord, Evan Lorne was following him discreetly, Elizabeth Weir and Teyla Emmagan were chatting over lukewarm tea, and Doctor Meredith Rodney McKay was running for his life.

Actually, by that point, he was hiding. Not too terribly successfully, but still. One would think, he would have snapped at a nearby salesperson had he had the breath to speak, that there would be a good many places to hide in a shopping mall. One would be wrong. Obviously this was the mall's fault and should be rectified immediately.

_This_ was why he rarely left his house. A Keeper was protected by his own power only as long as he remained within the domain of his power. In other words, he was all but useless everywhere except his own home, in which he was all but invincible. He had not achieved the status of most powerful Keeper in the western hemisphere for humanitarian reasons- oh, no. He'd gotten there purely through selfish motivation. He didn't want to die, and people with power, people who were aware, tended to die young and in agony. He didn't Know and therefore couldn't see his own death coming for him, so he had gone for the next best thing.

"Immature! And did I mention _not funny_?! You behave even worse than Madison, you big _baby_!"

And there she was: the reason Rodney was hiding in the first place. He ducked behind a shoe rack and rapidly backed away from the voice. He probably would have made it if not for the little she-devil that suddenly wrapped itself around his leg with an ear-shattering squeal of _"Uncle Mer!"_

Jeannie McKay Miller was aware. She'd had no choice. Not with her family. Certainly not with a brother like Rodney, who had become aware on his seventh birthday. She had never wanted to be aware, would go to great lengths to become unaware if such a thing were possible. She wanted a normal life with a normal family and a normal job. She wanted nothing to do with the power that ran thick in the McKay blood. Yet she was a McKay, no matter what her marriage certificate might say, and there was a healthy dose of respect and appreciation for her family in certain circles. People standing behind her in line would pay for her pretzel and Slurpee while she scrabbled in her purse for her debit card. There was a friendly policeman who kept making her speeding tickets disappear. The lady at the corner bakery always gave Madison a free chocolate chip cookie. They were only little things, a smattering here and there, little ways that the aware looked after their own, that they protected those who either wouldn't or couldn't protect themselves. Jeannie wanted a normal life, and she could have it; Rodney's people would still look out for her.

Unfortunately this didn't appear to extend to Rodney himself. Him she had to hunt down like some half-wild house cat, and once she found him, she often found herself wondering why she had bothered. This time he was in a shoe store, giving her a weak attempt at a smile. Her daughter was suction-cupped to his left knee.

"Huh," Jeannie said, picking a shoe up out of a nearby box and waving it at him. "Not really your style, Mer."

The shoe was moving too fast for him to properly see it, but he caught a glimpse of an ice-pick heel and straps and glitter.

"I didn't know you were in town-" Rodney began. Jeannie huffed angrily and smacked him in the shoulder with the shoe, thankfully turning it so she didn't stab him with the heel.

"I called you five times," she informed him angrily. She didn't even bother to point out his utter lack of skill at deception. He's well aware of his own failures, thank you.

"Oh?" He almost squeaked. Dammit. Bad Rodney. No squeaking. "Really? Did you call my house phone or my cell phone? Because some mailing company's got a hold of my phone number and I've been screening the calls..."

"Home or cell?" Jeannie demanded. Rodney paused and tried to remember which machine she'd left her increasingly irate messages on. Then he gave up, because he was screwed either way.

"All right, fine. I'm sorry I tried to avoid you, I've just got this big project-"

"You always have this big project, Mer," his sister sighed. She suddenly looked tired, and Rodney immediately felt like an asshole. Contrary to what most people thought of him, he really did care about others. Especially when those others happened to share his genetics.

"Look, I'm sorry if- I didn't mean to- If you want to- can you do something here?" He gestured to the dead weight still wrapped around his left leg, face buried against his hip. Jeannie smiled distantly at her offspring.

"You're her only uncle and she never gets to see you. Just let her cling for a little while."

"Like a leech," Rodney agreed darkly, carefully shaking his leg. The child may as well have used super glue for all the good it did.

"Mer," Jeannie said, carefully resting a hand on his arm. "I came out here to see you. I even brought Madison with. I know, you're not good with kids, but they seem to love you and I figured it couldn't hurt." She paused, removed the hand he was staring at. "I see that this was a mistake. I'm sorry we intruded."

"No, no, don't-" He took one faltering step forward and turned a death glare onto his passenger. "Do you _mind_? Your mother and I are trying to talk!"

Madison turned wide, frightened eyes from one adult to the other. Blue eyes, Rodney noted miserably. McKay eyes. She would have as much power as the rest of the family, except Jeannie didn't want that life for her daughter. Once upon a time Rodney had thought she was being foolish, stupid even, for thinking this was something she could walk away from. And to be honest, she was. They both knew it. It was more than just their heritage, it was what they were. It was how they defined themselves. Madison could no sooner ignore the power flowing through her than she could ignore an adrenaline rush. Sooner or later Jeannie would have to tell her and let her decide where to go from there.

Once upon a time, Rodney used Jeannie's apathetic approach to her power as the catalyst to drive them apart. The only reason he didn't regret that now was because he simply wasn't the sort of person who cried over lost years of personal relationships. Honestly, if it hadn't been that, they would have found some other excuse to hate each other.

"Something big's about to go down," he said apologetically to Jeannie. "Elizabeth won't tell me what, but she knows something. Or maybe she Knows it, I can't tell. She doesn't bother telling me anyway, why should she, I'm just the pet genius she likes to trot out at cocktail parties to make her look good."

"I'm sure if it were important she'd let you know," Jeannie answered soothingly. She shot Madison a concerned glance before continuing in a softer tone. "Let's face it, Mer, she's not going to tell you anything. You're a Keeper. All you have to do is stay here and stay safe."

"I would feel safer if you were closer. Or at least, I don't know, in the same country."

"There's nothing wrong with America. _Nothing_ wrong, Mer, so don't even start. And we're fine. If someone really wanted to get to you through us, they're going to manage whether we live in Buffalo or just down the street. And no, I am not moving in with you."

"Fine," Rodney snapped, ignoring the way his voice wavered. Jeannie's lips pressed firmly together and her eyes went flat and honestly, he couldn't tell if it was the _I forgive you for being a dick_ look or the _I'll be on the next flight back to New York_ look. He didn't know which he would prefer either.

God, he sucked at this.

"Ice cream!" he blurted, loud enough that every head in the store swiveled towards him. "Uh, let's go get some. They have a decent vendor in the food court." Then they could get out of the mall and have a nice big argument within the safety of his own home, and come morning everything would be back to normal. Jeannie would dismiss her power and make sniping little comments about his utter failure at anything resembling a sex life and he would mock her white-fence-blue-collar life and show off all his fancy toys. Sooner or later they would wind up in his basement, where his network's entire information and communications database was kept, because keeping things safe was what he did, and she would nitpick and fix up little things and he would pretend to have already noticed that and had simply had more important things to do than look after every little detail.

It wasn't exactly normal brother-sister bonding activities, but show him something- anything- normal about the McKay clan.

Madison swung those accusingly blue eyes to her mother, who found herself on the receiving end of two pleading gazes. She knew better than to hold Rodney's pathetic attempts at interaction against him and recognized the fumbled invitation for what it really was: a plea of _don't leave yet_.

Rodney may be a condescending jerk and even a total jackass upon occasion, but anyone who could walk away from that quiet despair didn't even deserve to be called human.

"You have to let go of Uncle Mer's leg so he can walk, Madison," she said. Madison's face lit up and she immediately pried herself off. Rodney was relieved for an entirely different reason. At that moment he couldn't quite remember why he'd been hiding from her, although he was fairly certain he'd be reminded of it several times before she left.

"So what's going on anyway?" Jeannie asked as they headed out of the shoe store and down the wide hallway to the food court. Rodney snorted and shrugged.

"No idea. Like I said, no one tells me anything until all the sudden it's 'Oh, Rodney, help us, we've accidentally blown up half the city'."

Jeannie just smirked at him. He sighed. "Yes. Bad liar, I know. Fine, but this- this is just, y'know, hearsay, all right?" When she nodded he continued even softer than before. "Elizabeth thinks she's found a wild power."

"A wild- what!" Jeannie screeched, reeling away as though he'd just admitted to having some ridiculously contagious disease. She visibly forced herself to rein it in. "Those are _dangerous_, Mer. They've destroyed entire networks before. And even if you guys can tame him, and there's no guarantee you can, he's still always be at least partially an outsider. He'll never really fit in, even if he takes over as leader of the network himself, and trust me when I say being an outsider sucks."

"Yeah, because clearly I have no experience with social misfits," Rodney shot back. He stopped in the corridor and gestured wildly around him. "I know how dangerous wild powers are, believe me, I've done more research on them than- never mind. The point is, Elizabeth wants to help him, and she won't let anything bad happen. She Knows, Jeannie."

The last three words were delivered helplessly, Rodney unable to communicate the trust and belief he had in Elizabeth. He trusted her with his life, which was something of a novelty for him. Jeannie smiled softly at that.

"All right," she said. Then, "You do realize that, if she somehow does tame him, you're probably gonna have to put him up while they train him."

"The price of being a Keeper," Rodney sighed dramatically. "It'll be fine, as long as his power stabilizes before then. Now- ice cream?"

Jeannie snorted a laugh and shook her head. She turned and started walking in the proper direction, herding her curious daughter and making some comment about a one-track mind. Rodney took after her doggedly, complaining all the while.

It would occur to him, later, that that was the last few days of happiness he would have before everything went to hell in a big way, before the arrival of the living hurricane called John Sheppard.

---

The woman watched the two siblings as they walked away. They were bickering loudly, voices amplified by the high ceiling of the food court. The little girl was clinging to her uncle's hand, nearly yanking him off his feet when she suddenly charged ahead to the ice cream stand.

Her mission was only to gather information on the Keeper McKay. He was a virtual unknown even within his own network. Only a select few knew what power he had beyond those of the Keeper. That he had another power was a given- he was a McKay, after all, and his entire family had a nasty habit of pulling aces out of their sleeves when all else had failed. It had been a difficult mission to start with, since like most Keepers McKay stayed close to home and shunned visitors. Added to that was the network he belonged to. Led by Elizabeth Weir and some as-yet unknown Air Force brass, the network was tight-knit and closed off to outsiders. Not all networks had a Keeper- in fact, only a handful did- and those that did guarded them fiercely. She doubted McKay knew how many people there were keeping an eye over him even now.

She groaned tiredly and let her head fall back. Whatever plan she had been formulating had just gone out the window. McKay's home was impenetrable and now it looked like his sister planned on sticking around for a little while. A Keeper was nearly as untouchable when he had family nearby as he was when he was in his domain. Plus trying to take on both McKay siblings at once was utter suicide. Their combined power was eclipsed by their combined genius, which in turn was surpassed only by their unspoken fondness for things that go _boom_.

There was a young black man sitting across the food court. He had been surreptitiously watching the McKay siblings. Now he was not-so-surreptitiously watching her. She smiled at him and slouched provocatively, letting her legs fall open slightly. He sneered dismissively and went back to stabbing at his frozen lemonade. She got up and headed out of the food court, back in the direction she had just come from.

She would sit on a side road, see if McKay's sister was staying with him or in a hotel. She had plenty of time. Sheppard's powers weren't going to settle for another month and a half and Weir- wherever that bitch was hiding- wouldn't risk sending him out to her precious Keeper until then. Mrs. Miller was doomed to lose her patience with her brother and storm off long before that point.

The glass doors swung open with a cheerful ease. The Christmas season would be starting soon; already there was a little bunches of poinsettia artistically arranged in large planters throughout the parking lot. She had until roughly New Year's to get this done. Certainly Miller wouldn't want to be separated from her husband for that long.

She smiled into the chilly winter air as she searched for her car. Soon, McKay would be dead and Sheppard removed from their network. Soon, she and her people could go home.

---

And thus was the day on which everything started to change.


	2. Glamour

Wow. That was... better than feedback than I expected. Not as much as in my dreams, but more than I hoped for. It has occurred to me that, since this is AU, y'all have no idea where it's going. So I shall list off some of the involving factors. There are potentials for spoilers here, but hey, that's kinda the point.

There will be: the City of Atlantis. Stargates. A long stay in Pegasus. Sam the whale. Fighting the Genii for Earth. Fighting the Wraith for all humanity. Iratus bugs. And much, much more.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

disclaimer: me no own.

---

Chapter Two- Glamour- _a meeting of fate and the dangers of a wild power._

The day everything changed again was a little more than three weeks later.

Working at the book store was a lesson in tolerable tedium. Elizabeth made no apologies for her line of work or the people that hung around, although really there was no problem on that front. John had been introduced to several of those people, including a fellow Air Force pilot named Lorne and a pretty woman called Teyla. Lorne had regarded him with lazy suspicion and Teyla had subtly avoided shaking John's hand or touching him in any way.

The latter bothered him more than the former, especially since Teyla seemed to be a touchy-feely kind of person. She'd looked stunned the first time they'd met, as if he'd whacked her in the face with a two-by-four before introducing himself. She avoided physical contact with admirable skill and left him only vaguely feeling like he had some contagious disease.

His second day there, Elizabeth had given him more of a sense of normality by sitting him down with three hours' worth of paperwork associated with getting a new job. She had also informed him that the twenty was coming out of his first paycheck, which oddly enough was something of a relief. He didn't want her thinking he needed handouts. By the end of the second week John was able to convince himself that this was just a normal job, and if the people were a little odd, well, so be it.

Which wasn't to say weird things didn't happen. Elizabeth still knew things she had no right knowing- she'd called him Major when he'd come in one morning, but at least she'd looked as surprised by it as he had been. Various people stopped by for no real reason he could determine and would talk to his boss for a few minutes before ducking out again. The day after he'd met her, Teyla had given him a henna tattoo of some arcane symbol on the inside of his left wrist- still carefully not touching him, but she seemed a little more relaxed around him after that.

Once he'd gone home to find something that looked somewhat like ancient Greek painted onto his door. The next morning he'd mentioned it to Elizabeth, who had gone still and quiet, lips pressed into a thin line. By the time he'd made it home that night, the Greek symbols were gone. They'd been replaced by a long string of designs similar to the one on his wrist. He'd been planning to wash the paint off, had been itching to do so all day, but found himself leaving the new stuff alone.

And, of course, there were the countless conversations that had abruptly ended every time he'd walked into the room, which was never a good sign. Once curiosity had gotten the better of him and he'd stopped just before entering the back room to listen.

"...went home yesterday," a small, nerdy-looking man was saying. He had some accent, Russian or something. John had heard his name once and promptly forgotten it.

"Did she go home as planned or did she leave early?" Elizabeth asked, and John realized by her tone alone she knew she was prying into a delicate situation.

"It is Christmas soon, yes?" Nerdy Guy said. "She went home for the holidays. I do not think Rodney upset her too badly. Not more than normal."

"They didn't speak to each other for eleven years. 'Not more than normal' isn't exactly reassuring." Elizabeth sighed tiredly. "He barely knew she'd gotten married," she added quietly. "He didn't even know he had a niece."

"Her husband is unaware, correct?" Teyla cut in softly, and John started. He hadn't known she was there. "As is her daughter."

"Madison. Yes. Kaleb has no power, but according to Rodney, Madison takes after the McKay family tradition with interest." He could hear Elizabeth's smile and found himself wondering exactly what tradition this family was known for.

"They are being watched?" Teyla half-asked.

"Of course," the older woman answered steadily. "Jeannie might not be a part of a network but she's still family."

"Still a McKay." Nerdy Guy added. There was a delicate pause that lasted long enough for the man to realize he'd just made a tactical error but not quite long enough for him to figure out what it was.

"Will she ever rejoin the network?" Teyla again.

"To rejoin she would have had to have been in it in the first place. And I doubt it- she wanted a normal life and she's happy with it."

"A normal life?" Nerdy Guy was being more careful now, his voice neutral. The question could be taken any way.

"She'll never really have one, not with a brother who's a keeper and a daughter who's probably going to have-"

Elizabeth cut herself off and for a moment silence reigned. Then-

"John?"

He scrambled backwards, nearly knocking over a shelf of books in his haste. Not that it mattered; Elizabeth knew he'd been listening the way she knew everything else that was impossible. None of the three left the back room, though, and he stayed out front and didn't answer. They never talked about it- there was no need, her point had been made. Sometimes John rewound the conversation in his head, trying to figure the double meanings behind such words as 'keeper' and 'unaware', but quickly gave up. He didn't like where that line of thought was leading him.

---

December seventh was the crux. It was the day Elizabeth Weir got up at her normal five-thirty, made herself a single pot of coffee, stood on her porch to watch the snow-lit sunrise, and Knew with sudden clarity, as instinctive and effortless as the way a human knows how to breathe, that today was the day Rodney McKay was going to die.

---

John Sheppard stumbled out of bed at six-oh-six the same morning, a full two hours earlier than he was used to. He pulled on the first pair of jeans his hand encountered and didn't even bother with a shirt. He staggered down the short hallway to the entry room and yanked open the front door.

"The hell do you want?" he spat at Lorne, who froze mid-pound. Behind him Teyla was drawing something on the wall with a red marker. As soon as she saw him she stepped smoothly between the two men and brandished her marker.

"John," she said, calm and severe, "the tattoo on your wrist. Let me see it, please."

He blinked at her for a moment before holding out his arm. She had refreshed the design earlier in the week. He hadn't seen a need for it; the lines were a little faded, true, but the design itself was still clear. Teyla gingerly took his wrist and redrew the symbol over the faint tan lines before he could pull his arm back and stop her. She also added another symbol higher up on his arm, close to his elbow.

"Hey!" he blurted, yanking away and rubbing at the marks. It didn't even smear. "Is that laundry marker? That stuff is hell to wash off-"

"That's the point," Lorne interrupted before dismissing John and turning to Teyla. "Can you handle him, or are you gonna need help?"

"I will manage," she answered, capping the marker and tucking it into a pocket. The hand she had touched him with she scrubbed on her shirt as if trying to remove some oily residue. Lorne nodded to her and headed back down the hallway. He was armed, John suddenly noticed. Just before he turned the corner John caught a glimpse of a nine mil in his left hand.

"What the hell is going on here?" he demanded of Teyla. She gave him an unreadable look.

"You must forgive us, John. If there was any other way, if we had any other choice... But a good man is going to die and we must prevent it. We simply do not have time to explain."

She said something else then, something archaic and flowing. There was an odd sensation on his arm and he glanced down to see the two glyphs- where they _glowing_? He looked up to ask---

_blank blank mind do as ordered put on shirt shoes get in car wait get on plane wait wait wait wait get off plane get in car wait wait blank mind blank gone_

--- looked up to ask and something was rushing at him, going easily ninety. He yelled hoarsely and jerked away. His foot hit something in front of him and something yanked tight across his chest and he cracked his head on something hard and cold. Ahead of him someone swore and the world was suddenly wrenching back and forth- oh, now he got it, he was in a car.

"Jesus Christ almighty what the fuck was _that_?!" Lorne snapped from the front seat.

"John has rejoined us," Teyla answered from beside him. She was holding her marker- swear to god, she tried to draw on him again, he was making her eat it- and was as unflappably serene as ever. He glanced at his arm and saw that she had drawn two bold lines over both symbols, x-ing them out.

"What the hell is going on here?" he asked warily, pushing himself as far away from her as he could get. "Where are we? And who _are_ you people?"

"You had to let him up now?" Lorne added. Teyla addressed him first.

"We may need his help and we will not have the time to explain everything later. If we are to help Rodney, we must use everything we have." She turned now to speak to John, seemingly content to let him keep his distance. "We are in Vancouver, John. As I said this morning, we are here to save a friend of ours."

"Ours?" their driver echoed quietly. Not quiet enough, however, for Teyla turned a glare on the back of his head that was easily the most disapproving look John had ever seen. Lorne obviously felt it- his shoulders hunched up and he sunk lower into his seat.

"Vancouver," John said hollowly. His mind immediately provided the memory of that conversation with Elizabeth the first day. It appeared the friend in Vancouver might be able to use his help now. He looked Teyla in the eye with as much coldness as he could muster and was rewarded with a hint of a flinch. "How?"

"There is still power in this world," she said softly, which was pretty much the answer John would have expected had he allowed himself to think about it. "There are still people who know how to use it."

"Power. You mean magic?"

"No," Lorne answered shortly. "Magic is a cute little parlor trick. It doesn't exist. What we have, what we do- it's real."

"Rodney insists the power is grounded in science," Teyla added, smiling fondly. "He maintains that this is merely another advancement in science, and that humanity is simply too stupid to see it for what it really is. He tends to mention Sir Isaac Newton and Copernicus at this point."

Which made no sense, really, but whatever.

"How did you get me here?" he asked slowly. All right, John, humor the crazy people and ignore the voice in your head that's saying they're not as crazy as you think-

Teyla was digging around in a bag at her feet. John felt his eyebrows scrape his hairline as she pulled out two long, slender sticks. The smooth honey-gold wood was imprinted with neat rows of glyphs.

"I used a glamour," she told him apologetically. "We needed you here and we did not have the time to use more... conventional methods. It is not an action I take lightly, and know I shall always be ashamed that I had to use such means."

"Come on, McKay," Lorne muttered suddenly. He made a snapping motion and tossed a cell phone onto the passenger's seat. "He's not answering. No one's got a bead on him either. According to Bates he should be at his house, but he's not picking up the emergency line there."

Teyla squared herself grimly and began to mutter softly to her sticks. John looked back and forth between the two.

"Is that it?" he demanded. "That's all you're gonna tell me?"

"If we try to go into anything else we'll have no time for anything but that, and right now we need to find McKay." Lorne's words were dark and grim and John suddenly realized that he, at least, did not expect to find McKay alive.

"All right, fine. Who is this McKay and why is he so important?" John snapped.

"The power can be used many different ways," Teyla said. "I am a Warder. Elizabeth Knows. Rodney McKay is a Keeper."

The warder thing could figure out on his own, and he could clearly hear the capital K in 'Knows' and had already guessed what it meant. "A Keeper?"

"He keeps things safe," was the maddeningly nonspecific response.

"Where he feels safest, no one and nothing can hurt him," Lorne translated. "And the people and things around him are protected as well."

"Keepers are rare. Keepers with Rodney's level of power and control are more so. He is a vital member of our network and losing him would be a personal blow to many people." Teyla held up her sticks, watching as the markings glowed and shimmered. "It also must be mentioned that he is a McKay."

"And that means...?" John prompted.

"The McKay family is one of the oldest and most powerful families in the new world," Lorne explained, suddenly sounding very tired. "They also have a tendency to turn up the rarer powers, like Keeping. Added to that, they're old money and smart as hell."

"Rodney is the only McKay left who is actively involved in the network. He has a sister, but she does not wish to get involved, and Elizabeth honors that."

As Teyla spoke, John found himself recalling the conversation he'd overheard that one day. Suddenly it made a lot more sense.

"What happened to the rest of the family?" he asked. Surely there would be more of them.

"We have enemies," the woman said shortly, and that was answer enough.

That was also the end of the conversation, for the discarded cell phone started ringing. Lorne snatched it up and answered tersely. He visibly sagged with relief as he listened to the person on the other end of the line.

"About damn time, McKay. Where the hell are you?" He paused, then grunted and tossed the phone back to Teyla before hauling the car around into a sharp u-turn. John's head impacted the window again and he swore loudly. "Tell him to stay where he is, we'll be there in ten minutes."

Teyla duly repeated Lorne's order. She spared John a brief glance and started to say something else, then stopped, eyes wide.

"He just hung up," she said after a moment. "There was a woman talking to him." Lorne swerved around a slow-moving hybrid and gunned the engine. John wrapped one arm around the headrest behind him and braced a leg against the chair in front of him.

_This is it,_ a voice whispered to him. _This is what your entire life has been leading up to._

John set his jaw, tightened his grip on the headrest, and braced himself for war.

---

On Earth, there were three unspoken, unyielding rules that all the aware obeyed. The first and third were rules he had lived by his entire life, even before Earth. The second, however, was new to him. It went something along the lines of _never do anything that might expose the existence of the power to any of the unaware._

Most other planets didn't have a word for 'aware' or 'unaware'- everyone knew of the power's existence, even if only a select handful could use it. Earth was special in that most of its inhabitants lived in ignorance. Given the planet's history of intolerance and treachery, such restraint was actually somewhat of a good idea.

Unfortunately it meant that Ronon Dex, the last surviving Satedan and Earth's only Specialist, couldn't blow away that curly-haired bitch who was currently holding a knife to the throat of one Rodney McKay. He had his blaster but had long ago agreed to refrain from using it to solve every problem. They were close to a street lamp and he had briefly toyed with the idea of overloading its circuitry with a surge of power, except that would hurt McKay as much as the woman.

There had been no Keepers on Sateda and once Ronon might have scoffed at someone who was so opposed to fighting. Now, however, he could see their worth. Amazing how living for a few months in a place where you know nothing can hurt you rearranges your thinking a little.

He carefully ducked away, starting the long loop around across the street so he could slip up behind them. With any luck McKay wouldn't piss her off bad enough that she decided to kill him before then. Technically speaking this wasn't something he had to do; he wasn't a part of any network. But Weir had helped him out when he'd first found himself stranded on Earth, unable to get back home- not that there was much left of Sateda, not anymore- and McKay had let him take over his pool house for the better part of a year. Going through the gate to McKay's house, even those who had no power whatsoever could feel the strength of the place. The Keeper's realm was calm and tranquil even if the Keeper himself was not and for the first time in his entire life Ronon had known what it meant to be truly safe. For that, he was willing to bail McKay out of a tough spot or two.

The woman holding McKay had what the Earthers called strawberry blond hair and wide dark eyes that were almost black. She would have been pretty in a youthful way had she not worn a mask of cold hatred. Ronon had pegged her as Genii from the moment he'd seen her but hadn't bothered to wonder what she was doing here- Earth was a refuge for survivors and outcasts, himself included. Now he wondered how he could have dismissed her so easily.

"-- have friends who will make you pay for this! If you think I'm kidding then you try hiding from someone who Knows! They will hunt you down and-"

He wasn't going to get there fast enough. The knife was already drawing a thin line of red across the Keeper's neck and he was talking faster, desperate now. Ronon absently wondered how people could remain so completely oblivious to this little drama, then realized the woman was probably using the Genii version of a don't-look glamour. He pulled out his blaster- the glamour was out there, she wasn't the only one who could use it to her advantage- and had it halfway up when she spotted him.

The knife snapped by his head, missing only because he had the faster reflexes. He whipped his blaster up as she expertly juggled both her captive and her weapons, and by the time he had a bead on her she had her own gun pointing at him. Her other arm was slung around McKay's neck, her hand gently touching his cheek in mocking parody of a caress. She could snap his neck in half a second from that point- Ronon was familiar with most forms of military training and the Genii were unfriendly enough to warrant special interest.

"The glamour goes down in three seconds," she told him smugly. McKay's eyes were closed and he was whispering something Ronon couldn't hear. They all knew his odds of getting out of this alive were abysmal at best.

"I wouldn't suggest that," a new voice said coldly, and the Genii bitch froze. Behind her a man, one of Weir's network if Ronon remembered correctly, tapped the back of her head with his own gun. "Might get in trouble with the Mounties. Let him go."

Teyla, the Athosian woman he had met upon his arrival to Earth, had circled around to the Genii's other side. The girl snapped her gaze to her, then to Ronon, then finally to her captive. McKay lifted his chin and turned his head, pulling away from her touch, and she sneered and shoved him away. The Keeper staggered out of her reach and instantly opened his mouth, as Ronon had known he would, but a single look from Teyla thankfully shut him up.

And then the last of their little party showed up, a long and lean man with disheveled dark hair. He almost casually slouched over to them and they all knew, the second he reached the range of the glamour, that things were about to go bad in a big way.

"Oh, _shit_," someone muttered, and the power started to fluctuate wildly around them.

Control of the glamour was wrested away from the Genii, who gave an audible squeal, and given to the newcomer, who clearly had no idea what was going on. The air around them seemed to explode with energy, cracking concrete and shattering glass and warping metal. The glamour itself was working in overtime and the world outside its range started to fade, washed out by a wall of white fog. A blasting wind knocked them all off their feet except the source of the calamity himself, and simple as that Ronon knew what had to be done.

Had he stopped to think about it, he would have realized the immense stupidity behind shooting an destabilized wild power with a weapon linked to his own power. He didn't stop to think, however; he just swung the blaster up and fired.

The wild power immediately settled, the glamour disappearing. People on the street stopped to gape at the damage that they had suddenly just noticed. The Genii girl was on her feet and running before any of them could stop her, not that it mattered. Ronon couldn't feel his right arm all the way up to his elbow- a backlash of power.

The man at the heart of the storm was already stirring. Ronon had set his blaster to stun before shooting, and with that much power running rampant, the stun that would normally last for hours only affected him for a few minutes.

"That's- He's-"

They all turned to look at McKay, who was on his knees and pointing towards the dark-haired man. He turned a wide, accusing gaze onto the other two.

"He's the wild power you found! Three weeks ago! His powers aren't even stabilized yet, what is he doing here and he's _filthy_! Where did you find him, in some halfway house?!"

"Not now, McKay," the first man- Lorne, or something- said sharply. He staggered to his feet and offered Teyla a hand. She politely ignored it and rose on her own. Ronon could feel the coldness creeping its way up his biceps; it would probably spread over his shoulder and a large portion of his torso before fading. He grabbed his blaster with his good hand and holstered it before pushing himself up.

He and Lorne manhandled the stunned man- Sheppard- into the back of a rental SUV. Lorne clearly remembered Ronon easier than Ronon remembered him and seemed vaguely uncomfortable with him nearby.

"I have to stay here," he said to McKay and Teyla. "Damage control. You two get up to the house and stay there until Elizabeth or I tell you otherwise. You got that? No shopping trips, no movies, nothing."

McKay was tracing the hair-fine cut on his neck. He stopped to scowl at Lorne.

"What of Ronon?" Teyla asked before the Keeper's lecture could begin. They all three glanced at him and he shrugged. He didn't really expect anything from them. He wasn't one of them.

Which only made it all the more surprising when McKay snorted. "It's my house, I get to say who's allowed. Get in." This last was snapped at Ronon, who supposed that it was the closest to a _thank you_ he'd ever hear from the man. He smirked and did as ordered, though he made a point of taking his time.

There was a crowd gathering around the damaged sidewalk. Lorne looked over anxiously, then began to push Teyla and McKay towards the SUV. With an aggravated sigh, the Keeper deposited himself behind the wheel while Teyla slid into the middle row of seats. Ronon had already staked out the passenger's seat and pushed it as far back as it would go. Sheppard was still unconscious in the far back row. Ronon had a bit of trouble with the seat belt- he couldn't move his right arm at all, but after having seen McKay wreck a car without ever shifting out of park, he wasn't about to tempt fate.

"Home," McKay muttered to himself. Teyla made a noise of agreement. She was staring out the window and twisting between her fingers her greatest weapon: the red laundry pen. Ronon took a single moment to consider the irony of that particular image, then discarded it. The power did odd things without bothering to explain itself. The best they could do was hang on for the ride.

Ronon spared a single glance for his new companions. Something told him this was gonna be one wild ride.

---

This was the second time John found himself waking up in the back of a rental SUV somewhere in British Columbia. The experience didn't really improve for the familiarity, especially not since he heard his name being dropped in what would have been an argument had Teyla not been one of the ones talking.

"He's not going in my house and that's final. Not until someone does something about that... that filth."

"Rodney," Teyla said, all careful control and ice-cold warning, "John is a guest of yours as well as a friend to Elizabeth and myself. You will treat him with respect."

"He's filthy. And what's with the scribbles all up his arm? One of those was a ward for a controlling glamour. I have to respect him even though I've only known him for five minutes, three of which he spent trying to kill me I might add, and yet you, his _friend_, are allowed to slap mind-control glyphs on him whenever you feel like it? How is that fair?"

"It was only once and I will not be doing it again. And you are not making him sleep on the lawn."

"Fine, he can have the pool house. I never really liked it anyway; at least this way I'll have an excuse to burn it down."

"Thought I got the pool house," a new, deep voice rumbled. John levered himself onto his elbow to look over the back of the seats in front of him.

"It's the pool house or the lawn," the man driving snapped. There was a very pointed silence and he started scrambling for words. "I mean, for him. The wild- Sheppard, right? Him. You can stay wherever you want. So obviously he gets the lawn."

"Rodney," Teyla said warningly. The driver (Rodney? As in, Rodney McKay? _This _was the guy they were all worried about?) made an exasperated noise and threw his hands into the air in surrender. Before he could say anything, though, the SUV took immediate advantage of his distraction and Teyla and the big guy and even John all started yelling at him to _get back on the road now_.

Once McKay had wrestled the SUV off the sidewalk, Teyla turned to regard John. "Are you all right?" she asked him, sounding cautious. She should be. So far John had been awake for- here he checked his watch quickly- nine hours, yet he he had only been aware for about thirty minutes of it. Not a promising start to a day that was half-over already.

"I'm fine," he answered, because he had no physical complaints and she didn't seem to be asking after his mental status.

"Oh, sure, ask the guy who almost kills us all if he's okay and ignore the brilliant irreplaceable Keeper who was kidnapped and held at knife-point and thrown around like a rag doll. That's all right, it's just spine damage, which is only permanent."

John rolled his eyes at McKay's grumblings. "You're not the only one who was kidnapped today," he said. "At least you remember what happened. As far as I'm concerned, five minutes ago it was six in the morning. And why do you keep saying I almost killed you?"

There was a brief pause. Then McKay met Teyla's gaze in the rear view mirror.

"You haven't told him anything, have you?" When she didn't immediately answer, probably trying to find a delicate way to reply, he sighed explosively. "Of course not, why would you do that? It's just so much easier to make someone else have to deal with- hey hey HEY! Watch it with that thing!"

"Shut up and drive, McKay," the big man snarled.

McKay started to fumbled his way through the beginning of a string of complaints, ran a red light, clipped a parked car with one of the side mirrors, abruptly gave up with an _oh, fine_, and turned his attention back to his driving in time to avoid playing bumper cars with a row of trash cans.

The big guy up front twisted around to study both John and Teyla. John found himself blinking in surprise at the clear dark eyes watching him. The guy had an air of self-confidence and barely restrained danger that gave the impression of decades of experience, except he was _young_. Mid-twenties; twenty-seven or -eight at the oldest.

"You need to tell him," he said to Teyla, tone softer than it had ever been when he had been addressing McKay. "You should've told him before."

"We were waiting until his power stabilized. Until then the safest option was to keep him unaware. His denial of his own power protected both himself and those around him. You know this, Ronon."

Something went dark and hard in Ronon's eyes at Teyla's gentle rebuke. "On Sateda we put all those with wild power out of their misery before they could hurt people," he growled. McKay snorted.

"Oh, sure. That's why you're here. Or did you think we'd forget you're a wild power just because you're an inheritor?" Ronon turned that same gaze on the Keeper, where it had considerable more impact than on Teyla. "I, uh- I mean- look, contrary to whatever impression I may be giving you, I don't actually want to die, so what say I stop talking and you stop petting your gun."

Dismissing the two in the front, Teyla turned sideways so she could face John. He could feel a knot in his throat and something told him that his day was about to get a hell of a lot weirder.

"John, you have-" Teyla began. Paused, took a breath, started again. "You are what is known as a wild power. Elizabeth was trying to keep you safe, both from those who would use your power as well as yourself, until you learned to control your power."

"My power. _My_ power. You mean I have power? Like you?" John scowled at her, trying to wrap his mind around that thought. Up front, McKay scoffed.

"Nothing remotely like ours. Yours is a _wild_ power. You can tame it, but it's like taming a lion: you don't really have control, you just have an agreement of sorts. We can control our power, which makes us more reliable and a good deal safer, but also limits our effectiveness." He had dropped the whining tone and now sounded like a college professor trying to give a lecture to a particularly slow batch of students. John wasn't sure if he preferred the bitching or the arrogance.

"You said he's got a wild power," he said, gesturing towards Ronon.

"There are two different types of wild power. Conan here inherited his, which is the safer kind. Yours is the awakened kind, which is immensely dangerous, example of which being your power being exposed to a simple don't-look glamour and nearly wiping out half a city block. Speaking of which, one of the wards on his arm was for containment, why did you feel the need to break it?"

"Rodney, focus," Teyla said, sugar-sweet, and John realized she was on the verge of losing her patience. Nothing else needed to be said; Rodney wisely left well enough alone.

"So my power was... asleep?" he asked. Again, McKay took the lead. John decided he could deal with the explaining-physics-to-a-houseplant attitude since McKay was the only one who seemed willing to actually do any explaining.

"Yes and no. Yes in that it's there and now you can use it, no in that it wasn't really 'asleep' to begin with, it just wasn't there period. Most normal people with power become aware of it around thirteen or so and spend their teenage years learning to control it, which, by the way, gives a whole new layer of hell to high school. You never had power until recently, where you were probably exposed to a large amount of free power which then latched onto you and became what we know as awakened wild power."

"Free power?"

"Yes, free power. Salisbury Plain. The Nile delta. Nineteen square kilometers of Amazonian rain forest. Power is associated with places as well as people, and sometimes when a certain person goes to one of those places they take pieces of the free power with them when they leave. Most times it wears off after a little while. Occasionally it doesn't."

"And I'm one of those lucky few, huh?" John sighed tiredly. "All right. Just so you know, I still think you lot are all a little nuts, but I'll play along. What happens now?"

"Your power is still new. It is adjusting to being attached to a human and being actively used. Until it has stabilized itself, it will lash out at any use of power nearby it." Teyla gestured towards the ward on his left wrist. "That was a containment ward, meant to prevent that."

"Why did you cross it out?" John asked, rubbing a thumb over the red slashes.

"Because we had no way of knowing what was going to happen. Should I have died, you would have had a greater chance of surviving if your power was free to protect you."

"Should you- Jesus," he muttered harshly, turning so he wouldn't have to see the calm, accepting sincerity in her gaze. She was serious. _They_ were serious, he thought, and suddenly everything seemed to break out of the fog of denial he had wrapped around himself. This was real, he told himself. This was really happening, it wasn't just some dream or a weird movie being filmed around him without his knowing. This was here and this was happening and the danger was very, very real.

A memory came unbidden then, an image of a street buckling and warping and five people hitting the ground hard, wind howling and cement cracking and iron twisting like fragile pieces of hay.

"Jesus," he said again, resting his forehead against the seat in front of him.

"Think he gets it now," Ronon said conversationally. John felt a sudden, irrational burst of hatred for him, for that kid playing grown-up and doing a better job at it than John himself was. He looked up front, about to snap off a scathing response, and stopped when he saw McKay watching him.

So far John had only seen the Keeper's face in profile when he turned to talk to them. Now McKay had angled the rear view mirror just enough for John to meet his gaze. He had blue eyes, John noticed abstractly, clear and bright like the sky on a calm winter day. He looked as though he wanted to say something, to offer sympathy or support, then saw John watching him and looked away.

"Yeah," John said finally, addressing Ronon and ignored the thousand-and-one things bouncing around inside his skull. "Yeah. He gets it now."

And the sad thing was, he did.


	3. Safety

Hey there, kiddies. Sorry I didn't respond to any reviews from last chapter, apparently the site was being a bitch and didn't even register that I'd gotten any reviews for chapter two until recently.

I'm gonna try to stick with the Monday/Thursday update schedule, but while I have a fairly detailed outline for the next few chapters- as opposed to the vague 'this is where I wanna go and how I wanna get there' that counts as my normal outline- they're not actually written. The next two chapters at least will focus almost solely on the team learning to be a team. They will also go into more detail about the infrastructure of Elizabeth's network, which means introducing other characters. The next few chapters will also flesh out more of the various ways the power works for different people- in other words, all exposition type stuff. The fun stuff will start up again soon, I just need to build a foundation.

Also, the cut-scene-style writing in regards to Jeannie's visit was an experiment. The stuff needed to be included but I couldn't work it in any other way.

disclaimer: me no own.

---

Chapter Three- Safety- _in which Rodney's power decides it doesn't much care for intruding wild powers_

Keepers were, as explained in a tag-team manner by McKay and Teyla, a rare and powerful lot. A good, well-established Keeper was worth his weight in gold a thousand times over. It took years to reach the proper level of power to be called a Keeper and seconds to destroy it. Strong in one way, dangerously fragile in another, Keepers were considered to be hands-off in the little semi-pretend game of war the various networks had going on. There were only about a dozen in North America; estimated world-wide total, somewhere around one fifty. A large percentage of them lived in- of all places- Poland. Go figure.

All of this, of course, did absolutely nothing to prepare John for the hell that was actually getting through the front door.

An outsider might have viewed it as the funniest damned thing they'd seen in years. John figured, given enough time, he could come to consider it amusing. At the moment, however, he really didn't care for Keepers. Or McKay. Or Ronon, that smirking bastard. Or much of anything, come to think of it.

McKay's house itself wasn't really a house so much as a mansion. It was far from city limits and set way off the road. It wasn't even in a gated community. It was just its own island of wealth and security with nothing around for miles. When John commented on the twelve-foot gate surrounding the place, McKay pointed out that it would be very hard to feel safe in a middle-class suburban two-story with only easily picked locks and shoddy sensors in the ways of security. John had to give him that.

Once they reached the gate McKay got out to fiddle with something. As he was sliding back into the driver's seat the gate swung open. McKay put the rental SUV back in gear and proceeded to creep forward half a foot before putting on the brake again.

The rear view mirror was angled in such a way that John, still stuck in the back row, only had to lean over slightly in order to see McKay's face. He found himself watching the Keeper. If he was going to be living here for a while, he would need to challenge McKay to a few hands of poker- there was no way he could lose against an opponent whose every thought was written on his face.

He watched as that clear blue gaze flicked back and forth between the steering wheel and the open gate. Steering wheel. Gate. Steering wheel. Ronon. Quick glance over his shoulder at the road behind them. Quicker glance at Teyla. Gate. Steering wheel. Teyla again, getting nervous now. He let the vehicle roll forward another eight inches, then stomped on the brake. Put it in park, let it idle as he stared at the gate. Put it in reverse and backed up a few feet. Put it in park for a second, then back in drive. Rolled forward six inches, brake, reverse for six inches.

"Is anyone else getting seasick?" John asked innocently.

"Out," McKay ordered. When his passengers hesitated, he made shooing gestures at them. "Out. Get out. I don't want this thing going past the gate. We're walking."

For a Keeper to be any good, they had to feel safe. If McKay didn't want the SUV near his house there was nothing to be done about it except leave it behind. He chased his reluctant guests out; once they were a fair distance away he swung the SUV around and parked it on the shoulder, facing away from the gate. John took advantage of this brief respite to study Ronon. Six three, maybe six four, probably two twenty pounds of pure muscle. John's first impression of him had been a grizzled old soldier; his second had been of a world-weary kid. Now he saw Ronon was a blend of both.

He had inherited his power, the meaning of which fairly easy to figure out. There was a story there, John thought, a long and bloody and disturbing story. He didn't plan on asking about it.

As McKay walked over to them, John suddenly realized both Ronon and Teyla were staring at the open gate as if it was a beach at Normandy. They were visibly preparing themselves for some difficult task. Not a good sign. John had a decent grasp of how this Keeping thing worked but didn't have even the faintest idea of the mechanics of it; watching them was not making him feel good about this whole thing. The gate opened to a long expanse of front yard. There was nothing special about it- no shimmer, no sparkle, no feeling of gathering power.

Because it wasn't gathering, he saw suddenly. It was already there, settled and steady and familiar. It was a thick blanket hovering under the sky and wrapping around the gate, and it felt as if it belonged to that place, as if that piece of land wasn't complete without it, and suddenly John understood. He understood what Teyla had been trying to explain. He understood why this bossy, demanding, impatient, arrogant son of a bitch was so important to so many people.

A Keeper was more than just a protector of physical objects. A Keeper was proof, reassurance. There was still magic in the world, even if those who used it didn't like calling it that, and people were still helping others simply because they needed help. Everything was going to be all right in the end, no matter how fucked up it got in the middle, because no bedtime story ended badly. It was an unscheduled recall to the worry-free days of childhood. That, John realized, was the true power of a Keeper: safety.

"I'm sorry, are we going to go in or just stand here and admire the view?"

John shook himself and looked at McKay, standing several feet in front of them with arms folded and scowling darkly. This probably should have broken the spell but somehow didn't, which made it all the more impressive. He glanced at the other two, shrugged, and stepped into the thick fog-bank of power.

Which promptly tried to kill him.

A few minutes later, when conscious thought returned, he found himself laying flat on his back. It took another few minutes before he heard something other than the freight-train rush of noise. There were still purple dots dancing in front of his nose, though, so he stayed still. It would probably be a few hours before he felt up to moving again, assuming the pain was misleading and he hadn't really just shattered every bone in his body.

Something dark interposed itself between him and the sky. It turned out to be Teyla's head.

"John? Are you all right?"

"Stupid question," McKay snorted from somewhere nearby. He sounded unsteady.

"What happened?" John asked carefully. He ran his tongue along his teeth and tasted blood. His lower lip had been split.

"Sit up, it'll feel better," the Keeper answered. John took a risk and pushed himself upright; surprisingly, McKay knew what he was talking about. The pain seemed to drain out of his body as he moved, although there was a moment of gripping nausea. He reached up a hand to feel his head for lumps and stopped to stare at his arm.

Teyla had been busy, it seemed. There were four new symbols scrawled on his left arm, as well as- he did a brief scan of his entire body- two on his right arm, one on his right knee, two on his shirt, and one on his left hand.

"Very interesting, watching her draw all over you without actually touching you," Ronon told him.

"Nice," John muttered, rubbing a thumb over the marks on his knee. The red lines looked like half-dried blood stains on the denim.

"I've never had a wild power around here before," McKay babbled, face pale and hands flitting around uselessly, reaching out to touch John but recoiling inches from contact. "Well, except Ronon of course, but his power was stable long before he got here. I had no idea that was going to happen, it shouldn't have happened, I let you in the same way I let everyone else in-"

Teyla interrupted with one of her ward-words and the red ink decorating John lit up like a string of Christmas lights. "Try it again," she advised, and John let out a hard bark of laughter. Try it again? Did she want him dead for some reason?

He pushed himself to his feet- neither Teyla nor McKay moved to help him- and stared at the gate. There was about fifteen feet of driveway between it and him. Ronon was inside, smirking a challenge at him.

"What are you grinning at?" John muttered darkly. The smirk grew.

"I like it here."

"A ringing endorsement. I'll have to remember to put it on the brochure." McKay, it appeared, was never going to want for a snappy comeback. It was a good thing the guy didn't leave his house much because with a mouth like that he was simply begging for trouble. With the long-suffering air of the unwillingly experienced, Ronon ignored him.

John took a deep breath and headed forward again, pausing only slightly as he reached the gate before stepping through. There was a slow, steady pressure pushing on every inch of his body and the air was forced from his lungs in one rush. Then he was through and it was just like the other side except he was on the safe side of the gate and there was a little voice in his head that was saying _you're safe now nothing's going to hurt you ever again_. Which was a blatant lie, but a little bit of denial could sometimes be a good thing.

They then began the long cold march up the driveway. Rodney spent most of the walk rattling off an endless spiel of complaints, starting with how cold it got in December, working its way through how he'd had to leave his own car behind, all the way up to how bad they were at rescuing people, what with power going berserk and his would-be killer escaping and whatnot. Ronon was rolling his right shoulder and massaging his bicep with his fingers as if his arm had fallen asleep. Teyla spent most of the walk trying to head Rodney off, then gave up and drifted over to walk silently beside John.

When they reached the house, however, the relative peace was shattered yet again.

"No-no. No no no. Don't even think about it." McKay, in three large strides, planted himself between John and the house, arms folded and jaw set. John blinked at him. It had been an odd day, to say the least, and from his stomach's complaints he hadn't had a thing to eat since dinner last night. Not to mention he felt like he'd run a couple dozen miles without stopping and his muscles felt like overcooked spaghetti. If he had ever been in less of a mood for McKay's bluster, he couldn't recall it.

"McKay, _move_," he ground out warningly.

"Excuse me? Did you just- do you think I'm one of your Air Force flunkies you can just order around? This is my house and you're not coming in until you do something about that filth."

"Rodney!" Teyla had evidently lost her patience. So had John, though he managed to set his jaw and let her take the lead.

"Oh, don't act all high-and-mighty, you won't even touch him!" Rodney shot back. Then his eyes went wide and his postured changed in one heartbeat from aggressive to defensive, as if he expected her to hit him. He started to say something, changed it to something else, changed that to something else, then gave up. Teyla merely watched him, disapproval radiating off her in waves.

"Want me to go get a hose?" Ronon offered mischievously.

"For Christ's sake, I'm not a dog!" John exploded. "And I'm not even that bad. I took a shower this- well. Probably not this morning, I was kinda busy being shanghaied, but I took one yesterday morning."

"It has nothing to do with you physically," McKay explained shortly. "It's not physical, it's more spiritual, if you will. Think of the Catholic church- sins and confessions and whatnot."

"And whatnot." John echoed tonelessly. Something told him McKay was not a religious man. Then again, neither was John.

"Some people seem to think that it's connected to life's various hardships. You know, the more difficult your life, the more it stains. It's a load of bull. No one really knows why some people are just filthy, that's just the way it is, and you are really, _really_ bad." He wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Warders and Keepers are more sensitive to it than most. Unfortunately it spreads easily and if you go in my house as you are now, I will seriously have to replace the carpet and burn everything you touch. So, you're not going in."

"Warders are sensitive to it, huh?" John mused. He glanced at Teyla, who nodded once. "So what do I have to do?" he asked finally, since McKay appeared to be uncompromising. The Keeper assessed him with a long look, then turned to the Warder. He started talking quickly, words slowing noticably as she glared at him.

"Can we just- with the hose? It'll take two minutes and we'll take him inside right after, he won't get that cold- fine. This way." And he started to lead them around the side of the house. Teyla rewarded his acquiescence with a brilliant smile and followed. John turned to Ronon.

"Am I really that bad?"

"Can't feel it," he shrugged. "Not my thing." And he headed into the main house with another smirk. John sighed and followed the other two. If he was really that offensive to them, then the least he could do was humor them.

This plan backfired horribly once they reached the pool house. McKay greeted him with a one-word order.

"Strip."

"Uh, what?" All right, scratch that idea.

"Your clothes. Take them off." McKay drew out the words as if trying to explain a difficult concept to a small child. When John failed to respond, the Keeper gave an agitated growl and snapped his fingers at him. "Clothes! Off! Bad enough you're filthy and I'm letting you in anyways, you're not going in there with clothes that reek of wild power and warding ink!"

"I'm not putting on a strip show on your front yard either," John snapped back. He had just about had it with this guy.

"No one is asking you to. And what Rodney is trying to ask is if he brings you some clean clothes, would you be willing to change in the front hall?" Teyla rested one hand, lightly, on John's forearm and one on Rodney's shoulder.

"Sure," he said finally, because when she put it like that there wasn't really a different answer. McKay grumbled to himself and headed into the house.

_You're doing it wrong._

John's head came up and he looked at Teyla and found her gone after McKay. He was by himself.

"Doing what wrong?" he asked slowly. With all the other weird shit happening around here, was it so odd that he was now hearing voices?

_Rodney. You're not taking the right approach with him. The way you're doing it now, the only thing he's going to do is dig in his heels and fight that much harder. Rodney McKay has broken stronger people than you that way._

"Right. Any suggestions on how I should handle him, or are you just gonna tell me what I'm doing wrong? Which, by the way, isn't really all that helpful."

No answer. Figures. John shrugged it off and slowly, carefully stepped through the pool house's front door. Teyla had deactivated the wards on the walk up here; they flashed once, briefly, as he stepped over the threshold. Other than that nothing happened. Mindful of McKay's fits, John wrapped his arms around himself and pointedly avoided touching anything.

"Here," that sharp voice snapped at him suddenly, and he turned just soon enough to catch a bundle of fabric with his face. McKay was sullen and sulky and glaring at John as though he were personally responsible for everything that had ever gone wrong since the dawn of time. John sorted through the fabric that had just been lobbed at him and found himself holding a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. For a moment he merely stood there, waiting. Then he cleared his throat, shifted his weight, and jerked his chin towards the hallway door.

"What? Oh! Oh, right, going away now." And McKay did exactly that. John allowed himself a small smile at that. Maybe... a little patience, a lot of tolerance, as much sarcasm as he could manage... maybe the voice was right.

The wards on his clothes didn't want to let go of him. The one on his knee was particularly stubborn; John literally ran himself into the wall trying to pry his leg free. He finally had to call for help, which was really one of the most humiliating things ever, especially since it took Teyla all of two seconds to fix the problem- she pulled out that evil marker and drew a line through the glyph. The only high point in that entire scenario was that McKay hadn't been around to see that.

He was going to start carrying around his own marker after this.

The clothes fit decently well. Stuffed into one pocket was a balled-up pair of socks, which he put on despite the instantaneous- and doubtless immature- desire to go barefoot just to see McKay twitch. Then there was about ten minutes of patiently waiting, ten more minutes of not-so-patiently waiting, and twenty minutes of exploring the house. The Keeper himself John found in what looked like a home office. He was carrying some sort of long plastic rod, like a conductor's baton, and waving it around aimlessly as he paced. John didn't quite duck fast enough to avoid taking a jab to the throat, although he considered it worthwhile since McKay shrieked and jumped when the stick made impact.

The stick was glowing subtly, a soft crystal-white light. It put John in mind of angler fish and other such deep sea glowies; it had the same hypnotic beauty. When McKay put it down the glow faded, and John found himself suddenly yearning to pick it up, to make it light up bright as the sun, and refrained from doing so only because the Keeper was fingering a paperweight in a decidedly unfriendly manner.

He was ushered up to a guest bathroom and told, repeatedly, to touch only what he absolutely must and nothing more. When he finally managed to convince McKay that he got it, he was handed a shampoo bottle that had nothing remotely resembling shampoo in it. The second John touched the container he yanked his hand away and stared at it as though the pastel-green plastic had just bitten him.

"What is that?" he demanded.

"Stuff," McKay answered shortly. "Cleaning stuff."

"So, it's soap?"

"If it was soap I would have _said_ soap. It's a conglomerate of various chemicals and raw minerals that, with the inclusion of controlled doses of Alchemic power, compounds to form a low-grade Purge inhibitor that cleanses both your physical and, for lack of a better term, spiritual body."

"Huh. You said Alchemic power, right?"

"Yes."

"So... it's magic soap."

John didn't know of any word in the English language that most aptly described the look McKay gave him at that. 'Withering' probably came closest, although it did no real justice.

"Use all of it," the Keeper ordered, and John had the feeling that he had just been written off as a total idiot.

"Towel?" he asked after a quick glance around. For a long moment it looked as though he were going to be ordered to do without- he was going to be paying for that magic soap comment for a long time- then McKay sighed and headed back into the hallway.

When he came back, John was holding a travel-size bottle of body lotion. He turned it so McKay could see it. "You don't strike me as the Lavender Mist type, Rodney," he said, drawing the man's name out. Something in McKay's face went hard and he took the little bottle carefully, rolling it across his palm.

"Probably my sister's," he muttered, more to himself than John. He glanced up and John rocked back on his heels. He looked lost and scared and lonely, like a little kid who didn't understand why his parents were screaming at each other, and John had to fight off the desire to do something immensely stupid like pull him close and kiss that sadness away.

Oh, hell. Not going there, John, remember? Not. Going. There.

And then the moment was over, because McKay was back to studying the little bottle and saying something about how his sister had visited recently. John took the towel, tugged it away from him, and gestured towards the door. McKay got the point and left.

_You see, Sheppard?_ a dark voice laughed in his head. This wasn't the same one as earlier. This one had plagued him for years. _It's not really all that safe here in the Keeper's domain. Even the Keeper himself knows that_.

Yeah, well, that was McKay's problem. John intended to get his feet under him, figure out what the hell was going on, and get gone.

There was a pink loofah sitting in one of the corners of the shower stall. Somehow, the sight of it made him feel guilty. He picked it up by the cord and tossed it into the small trash can tucked discreetly beside the toilet.

Not going there. Not today, not ever.

He picked up the magic soap, shivering at the power he could feel in it. It was a different kind of power than that he'd seen so far. Maybe he ought to rethink his plan- there was a whole new world out there and he was woefully unprepared for it.

"Alchemic, huh?" he said to the bottle. Alchemy he had heard of. Lead to gold, philosopher's stone, Sir Isaac Newton. He grinned at the bottle.

"Cool."

---

The first night she stayed at her Uncle Meredith's house, Madison Miller did not have a nightmare.

At this point in the story, the audience might grant the storyteller a blank look of the sort made famous by dairy cows. They might also ask if this is unusual, if the girl was prone to nightmares or had seen something that frightened her, and the confusion would only increase with the repeated answer of _no._ This would be doubly true if the storyteller in question was Madison's Uncle Mer, who could maybe tell a story in a linear manner with no distractions or digressions if his life depended on it, but only maybe.

As it was, the point behind this emphasized lack of a nightmare was thus: somewhere around one in the morning, Madison and her mother made the long, cold trek between the pool house where they had been set up and the main house where Uncle Mer lived. As a Keeper, he was well aware of everything that was happening on his property, and had had the porch light on and back door open long before they reached it. Madison, upon seeing him, had bolted from her mother and wrapped herself around her uncle's waist like some sort of blue-eyed octopus and began babbling about some bad dream she had had.

The catch, of course, being that children with power rarely dream and have no nightmares whatsoever.

Madison's Uncle Mer had given his sister a long, cold glare, filled with the special sort of hatred only siblings could evoke. Madison's mother had only shrugged and smiled. Meredith Rodney McKay was a lot of things. A bad uncle was not one of them. He had herded the two girls into the house and told Madison to pick her new room but just don't touch anything and calmly informed his sister that he hated her and she was all sorts of evil for using her daughter to score her own room in the bigger house. Jeannie merely kissed his cheek and told him that, while he would never really understand people, at least he got adorably flustered in the process of failing. She said 'adorable' in a way normally used to refer to teddy bears and shar-pei puppies.

At that point Madison's Uncle Mer gave up and went back to bed.

-

For all his protests over the two females making themselves at home in his house, Rodney was surprisingly tolerant of it. Jeannie unceremoniously booted him out of the master bedroom, pointing out that he spent more time in his basement lab anyways and by the way, she's a woman, she _needs_ the big bathroom. Rodney, after a few token protests, let her have it and moved into the small bedroom in the basement.

Jeannie's realm soon expanded to include the kitchen. Before it had been a clean, almost sterile place. Rodney went in there to make coffee, heat up frozen pizzas and microwave dinners, and store leftover takeout in the fridge. This lead to an understandable lack of kitchenware that Jeannie found appalling. The first morning there she left for the store almost as soon as she got up. She returned four hours later loaded down with everything she thought a kitchen could possibly need.

She made good food, though, so he hadn't complained too much. He did call her a classic example of the domesticated housewife. She retaliated by trading out his French roast with that hideously cheap store-brand coffee. He accused her of trying to sabotage his work by means of exhaustion and added a parting comment about Madison's recommending her chocolate chip pancakes. She recognized the apology for what it was and gave him his real coffee back. That was just the way it worked with them.

If Jeannie was a slow invasion, Madison was full-scale nuclear war. The second he let her in she managed to get everywhere. He found crayon shavings ground into the carpet in the family room. A tube of glitter somehow got poured onto a blanket which then found its way into the wash, so he now had several shirts that shimmered pink. A brand new container of tiny hair clips spilled onto the bathroom floor and Rodney immediately developed the fun habit of finding the sharp-edged little bastards with his bare feet. The orderly handful of magnets on his fridge had a population explosion; the chrome front could barely be seen between plastic letters and gaudy tourist-trap magnets. One of the things Rodney objected most to was when the TV began to betray him as well- replacing Battestar Galactica and _Star Wars_ with SpongeBob SquarePants and _Finding Nemo_. Rodney calmly informed his sister that there was no way in hell her daughter's viewing choices weren't rotting her brains. Jeannie's answer was that Madison is _five_, for god's sake, let her watch her cartoons, and by the way, exactly how is _his_ viewing selection educational?

By the end of day five in a seventeen-day visit, the girls had made themselves right at home and Rodney, who honestly expected to have snapped long before now, found himself letting them.

-

Two solid days of SpongeBob and the sibling snark-fest turned out to be more than any of them could bear and Jeannie dragged all three of them back to the mall. She and Madison spent the afternoon stocking up on Christmas decorations since Uncle Mer was sadly lacking. Rodney spent the afternoon saying things like_ put that down!_ and treating everything Christmas-related as if it were a loaded weapon. The next field trip was devoted to buying presents, which meant Rodney had to spend the entire shopping trip staring at the ceiling so as to not be accused of peeking.

On day eight Jeannie declared herself sick of playing tourist in her home town and told Rodney to take Madison by himself. This triggered a panicky rant on how children were fragile and easily misplaced and he really didn't like kids to begin with. Five minutes later he was sitting in the car, studying his niece as he tried to decide what to do now.

"Little girls like horses, right?" he asked, and she nodded solemnly even as her eyes lit up.

They staggered back to the house sometime that evening. Madison was full to the brim of tales of white horses and white whales and fancy Italian restaurants. She was also dragging a stuffed beluga whale as big as she was. Jeannie gaped at her daughter's prize for a long moment, then sent her to put it in her room and turned a gimlet glare on her brother.

"I didn't even misplace her once," he told her, and he sounded so proud of himself she had no choice but to laugh.

-

It had been almost as though time wasn't really passing, as if they were on an island outside its reach. Two and a half weeks was certainly far longer than either of them had expected, but Madison acted as something of a buffer between them, preventing their arguments from reaching any real intensity. They both had their taboos- Rodney didn't mention Kaleb's lack of power or brains or anything in general that made him worth marrying, Jeannie didn't make any comments about the network that seemed to have abandoned her brother except when he was convenient to use.

All good things, however, must come to an end. At least this time they ended amiably. Rodney had been getting antsy, wanting to get back to spending large chunks of his day barricaded in the basement lab. Madison was starting to get whiny in the familiar way of a homesick child. Jeannie noticed both, and when Kaleb started calling two or three times every night 'just to chat', she decided to pack it in.

Rodney drove them out to the airport and escorted them to the terminal himself. He stood by one of the big bay windows and watched the plane take off. Then he went back to his quiet, empty house and simply hovered in the doorway for several long minutes before taking a sharp left and heading down to the basement.

The next three days were lost in a haze of coffee and sleep deprivation and work. When he finally reemerged from his lab he was in desperate need of a shower and a nap, except when he walked into his room he was hit in the face by a wave of nostalgia triggered by his sister's perfume.

After a nap in the guest room, Rodney set about the long and lonely business of de-girl-ifying his house. He vacuumed up crayon shavings and glitter. He picked the few remaining intruding magnets off the refrigerator and put them in a drawer. He stripped his bed down to the mattress, washed the sheets and blankets, and shoved them into the far back corner of the linen closet. Ignoring the temperature outside, he opened his bedroom windows to let it air out. The stuffed beluga whale, which had been too big for the plane and he had promised to mail to them, was boxed up and sent on its way. Food he wouldn't eat or that would spoil was pitched out. The Christmas decorations he had said he'd put up when the holiday got closer were relegated to boxes which he put in the storage half of his garage.

Rodney McKay was a man on a mission. He intended to purge every shred of evidence that there had ever been anyone other than himself in the house. It took three days, but finally he walked through every room in his house and saw not one hint of Jeannie or Madison. He stopped in the living room in triumph...

… and was promptly smothered by a gripping loneliness he had experienced too many times before.

He left the house then, needing human contact even if it was with total strangers. He didn't inform Bates he was leaving and ignored Lorne's increasingly frantic phone calls. When the Genii woman had put her knife against his neck a small part of him had been tempted to laugh and tell her to go ahead and kill him.

Then Ronon Dex had melted out of the shadows, armed with that lovely gun of his, and everything suddenly got loud and busy again.

---

Rodney held the Lavender Mist body lotion tight in his fist. He hadn't bothered to look in the pool house; Jeannie had only spent a few hours there. He considered heading to the bedrooms to see what else his sister had left behind.

In the bathroom, water started running. Rodney glanced at the door.

"Magic soap," he scoffed. One hand came up to rest just shy of the door and the wood began to glow the soft blue-white light that had made Sheppard think of phosphorescence. "Make it _cold_," he said to the house, to the power it was soaked in, and the glow rippled away from his hand and faded into the walls. A moment later Sheppard started to curse.

Rodney merely tightened his grip on the small bottle in his hand and smiled.


	4. Learning

Yes, I know, it's late. Yes, I know, it's shorter than I would like. Yes, I know, I suck. To be fair, though, this chapter was a bitch to write. Plus my basement flooded. Which sucks even more than I do.

Quick question: I'm pretty sure I already have a good idea, but if Daniel Jackson were to show up in this fic- like next chapter- what if any power would be best for him? Just make one up, it's what I've been doing.

Disclaimer: me no own.

----

Chapter Four- Learning- _of the Wraith, the Ancients, the Stargate, and General Jack O'Neill_

A less patient woman might have gotten annoyed by now.

Elizabeth threaded her fingers together, hands in front of her, and took a measured three steps in one direction. Then she turned to the left and walked the same distance, then turned left again. Soon she was repeatedly etching a neat little square into the carpet, too controlled to be true pacing yet too systematic to be anything but. Her cell phone sat on the corner of the nearby desk, silent and still. She wasn't worried- Evan Lorne had already called and told her of their success.

Beside the phone was a framed picture, glass side facing away from her. She stopped moving to regard it properly. The man who lived in this particular apartment was not an emotional, nostalgic person; a picture in such a place of honor and meaning was incongruous. She reached out to pick it up and started to turn it around.

"You've been here for an hour and you're only now getting nosy?" a sharp voice asked. She started and twisted around to face the newcomer, whom she recognized immediately. As she watched he removed the hand that had been resting on the butt of his holstered gun. "Guess that means the stuff in my sock drawer's safe."

Brigadier General Jack O'Neill was aware. He had figured it out for himself; during his long and storied career with the Air Force he had been to at least three places with free power, and the weird shit that happened there and to the people who went there even after they left had been too much for him. He'd started nosing around, asking questions and paying attention, and one day Elizabeth had been in one of her stores- the one in Cincinnati, to be specific- and he'd walked in and told her he knew what she was and what she could do. It had been the first and last time in her life that she had been so completely blindsided.

O'Neill was what Ronon Dex called a blind- he could not be sensed, seen, or otherwise affected by the power. It was as if he simply wasn't there. Even the most powerful of spells slid right off him without hitch. The day he had met Rodney McKay, he nearly destroyed the Keeper's safe zone by simply strolling in. They'd managed to calm Rodney down then before he worked himself up into a truly impressive fit, but it had been a close call. O'Neill's unusual gift wasn't really a power at all but it could still be used all the same- their various enemies had to use conventional means to ferret out his identity instead of scrying or using any power-based searches. So far none of them had proven themselves innovative enough to figure that out on their own.

Somehow this particular gift allowed O'Neill a clear shot up to general and landed him in charge of the network he had been more or less spying on. To this day he still maintained that he had no idea how that had managed to work out. Elizabeth, who had been a part of the large and complicated world of power and its users her entire life, had wondered the same thing herself. Like O'Neill, though, she didn't ask too many questions. He was useful and well-connected and trustworthy and _there_. No point in looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Elizabeth placed the picture back on the desk without looking at it. O'Neill strode past her and casually tipped it over so the picture side was flat on the desk. "I'd ask how you got in, but I don't think I'm gonna like the answer."

There was a brief silence here. Elizabeth got the feeling she was supposed to tell him anyways. She didn't say anything. He looked at her, watched her, then groaned.

"All right, fine. How'd you get in?"

"I have a key," she said easily, trying not to smile. He frowned and she held up her keychain. "Daniel gave it to me."

"Daniel gave it to her. Gonna have to have a nice long chat with Daniel sometime soon." O'Neill muttered to himself. He caught her elbow and guided her out of the office, depositing her on the couch in the living room and heading into the kitchen. A moment later he reappeared with two bottles of Bud Lite. Elizabeth accepted one and immediately set it aside. O'Neill draped himself across the recliner and drained half his beer in two long swallows.

"So," he said finally, studying the brown glass bottle in his hand. "Heard you were pulling a Houdini. Any particular reason you decided to hide out in my apartment?"

She didn't ask how he knew she had decided to vanish for a while. There was no point, really, because just as she had her ways he had his and he was no keener on sharing with the class than she was. She had gotten used to his covertly checking up on her a long time ago.

"Rodney is alive," she said, partly because it was important for him to know and partly to see how much he already knew. He nodded once and gestured for her to continue. "He's back at the house now with Teyla and Sheppard, as well as Ronon." Another pause, no reaction. This was unusual- the military aspect of their network wasn't very fond of Ronon Dex. "The plan is for them to stay there until told otherwise. Being near a Keeper and a Warder should help John's powers stabilize quickly and without incident."

"Without more incidents, you mean."

It had to be Lorne reporting in to both of them. It didn't bother her- he _was_ Air Force, which made for split loyalties- she just hadn't thought he even knew who O'Neill was. It was the general's call, not hers, so she let it be.

"The woman who tried to kill Rodney was Genii," she said instead. O'Neill nearly spat out a mouthful of beer.

The Genii had yet to prove themselves a real threat to anyone, but that wasn't for lack of trying. They were being very careful to stay just under the radar and were doing a maddeningly good job of avoiding attention. Most refugees that came through the 'gate knew next to nothing about the Genii, but those from the more advanced societies- like Sateda- had borne chilling rumors of arms dealers and mercenaries and double-crossers. Nothing solid, no real reason to deny them safe harbor on Earth, but enough to warrant keeping an eye on them.

Going after a Keeper, which qualified as one of the dirtiest moves in the book, warranted a lot more than that.

"Dex tell you that?" the general asked, recovering fairly well. Elizabeth nodded and edged her beer over towards him. He glanced at it, shook his own bottle and realized it was empty, and leaned over to take it.

"He would know best," Elizabeth confirmed. O'Neill grunted but didn't rise to the bait.

"Then we have a problem," he said instead. She sighed tiredly. They had plenty of problems. Looming threat of Wraith invasion, since it was almost criminally stupid to assume Earth could avoid notice forever. A rapidly advancing society that constantly verged on exposing the truth. Power that was expanding beyond normal rates, producing wild powers and giving people abilities they'd never heard of before. And now the Genii were making their move.

"So what do we do?" she asked. Division of responsibility between the two had left her acting as something of a politician, governing the people in the network, while he played up the military aspect and protected them. It had been divided that way due to personal preference and really had very little to do with the fact that O'Neill himself could be most easily described as 'antagonistic'. Therefore this was his problem and she acknowledged his lead.

"What we need to," O'Neill answered flatly. His tone chilled her almost as much as the words themselves. Open war between the networks never ended well, but letting the Genii get away with attempted assassination would be doing no one any favors.

"Then we need to call in reinforcements," she offered cautiously. He tilted his head to the side and studied her.

"You suggesting something here, Doctor Weir? Something like combining networks?"

"The Genii are not natives of Earth. Most likely we're far from the only enemy they've made."

"You know why they're targeting us," O'Neill said quietly, not letting her deny or ignore the truth, and she sighed.

"The Stargate," she replied, equally quiet.

Their network had stumbled across the ancient device about fifty years ago. In the decades since, it had become apparent that the Stargate- or at least Earth's Stargate- was very much a one-way window. While refugees from other worlds reported being able to use their world's 'gate to wander an entire linked network of planets, Earth's 'gate only opened from off-world. Leaving the planet was, as yet, impossible. The Genii seemed to think they could change that. If they could or not, Elizabeth didn't much care. She wasn't handing over her planet's Stargate to a group of people who had only been on Earth for four years.

"So... you go and chat up the other network heads, and me? Business as usual?"

Elizabeth rose to her feet and gazed down at the man in front of her. He could almost be mistaken as a tired old bastard- a laughably false image. Power and age be damned; he was still one of the most dangerous people she had ever met.

"Business as usual," she agreed.

---

In a Keeper's house, nothing went unnoticed for too long. When Teyla found the boxes piled in the back corner of the garage in what was clear banishment, she knew Rodney would be along soon. She was right.

"Rodney, what is this?" She looked at him, hovering in the doorway, and held up a string of lights. Rodney paused, clearly trying to decide if he was going to turn and run or try to chase her away from the boxes before too many evil ideas could be formed.

"Jeannie bought it all," he said instead. "She's, you know, into the whole holiday thing."

"Then why don't you-"

"Because I don't want to," he interrupted, staring at the boxes as if he couldn't meet her gaze. Teyla looked at the box she had opened, then sighed and closed it. She knew Rodney well enough to know how desperately out of her depth she was with him, and that was pretty much it. He respected her, respected her power, was slightly afraid that every time he said something inappropriate she would whack him on the back of the head with her sticks and therefore attempted to restrain himself around her. Most people mistook this as her having some sort of ability to influence or control him.

"How is John? He seems to be having a good deal less trouble with this than Elizabeth thought he would." She stepped away from the boxes and walked to the door, watching Rodney relax a little more with every step.

"Oh, he's just fine. I gave him some of Radek's cleaning compound and the first thing he does is call it 'magic soap'. He's using it now." Pause, smirk. "Maybe."

Teyla couldn't help but smile at that. The 'maybe' could mean anything, but most likely it was some form of retribution on Rodney's part. She would probably never understand the Earth peoples' refusal to call it _magic_. Then again, she would probably never understand how Earth had managed to reach such an advanced level of civilization, or how its people could be so blind to the vast power its planet had.

Except she understood it completely. Earth had advantages no other planet did: it had been home, however long ago, to the Ancestors, and it had never suffered the wrath of the nameless ones.

"Evan Lorne just called," she said to distract herself from those thoughts. "Everything is being taken care of. He found your car and is bringing it here, as well as supplies for us."

McKay sighed and rolled his shoulders. "Great. Thus begins the term of indefinite house arrest. Which, ironically, I submit myself to voluntarily all the time, yet now that I'm told I can't leave, I find myself wanting more than anything to get out."

Teyla nodded and smiled in sympathy. She knew she would be getting restless within a few days, but Rodney's contrary nature was no doubt already encouraging him to do exactly the opposite of what he was ordered to do. Ronon and John were far more difficult to predict. Of all the ways to keep John safe, the combined efforts of a Warder and a Keeper were probably the best way to go. They would have to convince him to stay here for as long as it took him to learn to control his power.

Ronon, on the other hand, was apparently free to come and go as he pleased. Hopefully he understood what such an open-door policy meant when dealing with Rodney. Whether he did or not, though, he was in no hurry to leave himself. He had just thrown in his lot with Elizabeth Weir's network yet wasn't actually a part of it, and in doing so he had probably made the Genii very angry. To walk away from this place, where he was safe and, allowed if not welcomed, would be as good as killing himself. And Ronon Dex had made surviving his specialty.

Teyla found herself following the gravel pathway back to the pool house. Rodney drifted after her for a moment, then stopped and pivoted on one foot to glare at the main house. No doubt Ronon was up to something Rodney wasn't too keen on.

"I will bring John up to the main house," Teyla offered. "Doubtless he will have many questions that need answering, and we have many things to explain that he won't know to ask about. It would be best if I handled that part, since you and Ronon..."

"Suck at people stuff. Yeah, I got it."

Not quite how Teyla would have put it, but she had been something of a diplomat for her people and therefore understood the definition of 'tact'. She gave a half-nod. "Do you have food or should I call Evan and request he pick up a few things?"

"No, I have- stuff. Some stuff. Jeannie bought it. I threw out a few things but- hey, I had a five-year-old running around my house for two and a half weeks, I have at least peanut butter and jelly."

Making a mental note to call Evan and ask him to bring some real food when he came out, Teyla nodded and smiled. Rodney turned to head back up to the main house while she continued down the path.

John was out of the shower, dressed, and wandering down the stairs scrubbing at his hair with a towel when she walked into the main hall. He yanked the towel off his head and shot her a cocky smirk.

"So how am I now?" he asked.

"Much better," she said, and meant it, at least in regards to his aura. Judging by his current physical appearance- borrowed clothes, hair even more rebellious than normal- he most likely wasn't referring to how he looked. She half-turned to indicate the door behind her. "There should be something to eat in the main house if you are hungry, and knowing Rodney there will certainly be coffee."

"Food sounds good," John replied, laid-back and controlled as always, as though he hadn't brightened at the mere suggestion. Teyla tried not to wince as she thought of how hungry he must be. He hadn't eaten at all when she'd had the control glamour over him- she'd had other things to worry about- and using the power was a large strain on the body.

For the fourth time that day Teyla followed the path around the lawn and into the main house. From somewhere near the rear of the house she could hear a television set blaring loudly and Rodney yelling even louder. She caught a glimpse of him through the doorway, pacing and gesturing wildly with one hand. He was on the phone. Snatches of words filtered through to her, including _barbarian _and _media-slave _and similar such endearments.

John made a beeline for the kitchen, either following the smell of coffee or simply operating on instinct. By the time Teyla caught up with him he was sitting on the counter and inhaling what must have been the world's fastest-made turkey sandwich. He didn't quite swallow before he started talking to her, which was considered rude on every planet she had heard of to date.

"So how long am I gonna be staying here?" he asked, chasing down the last few bites with a few gulps of coffee. He reached over to the coffeepot and refilled his mug, then hopped off the counter and set about making himself another sandwich.

"You are free to go whenever you wish," Teyla replied carefully. "However, I would strongly suggest you stay here, at least for a short while. It will be much safer, both for yourself and for the people around you."

"_You're_ the people around me," John pointed out, tossing a suspicious glance over his shoulder as he pulled the package of turkey out of the refrigerator.

"We are also more capable of protecting ourselves from your power, should it lash out again."

"Didn't look like it the first time." Having finished making his sandwich, he tossed the turkey back into the refrigerator and bumped the door closed with a hip.

"Good thing I'm still here then," Ronon cut in smoothly. He reached around Teyla to snatch up the sandwich before John could grab it away. There was still very little movement in his right arm, but as Teyla watched, his fingers flexed and curled into a fist, an unspoken answer to her unasked question.

"Hey!" John protested, scowling at the Satedan yet obviously knowing better than to try to retrieve his stolen meal. Instead he grunted and set about making yet another sandwich, pausing long enough to shake a slice of bread at Ronon in what could not have possibly been intended as an intimidating manner. "You could have at least asked."

Teyla chose to ignore him and instead turned to Ronon. "Then you intend to stay here, Ronon?" she asked. He shrugged carelessly in return, which most likely meant that he would stay as long as other people kept feeding him.

"So I take it he's not actually a part of your little... group, then," John interpreted, gesturing to indicate Ronon as he spoke.

"It is called a network, and he is not," Teyla answered. "But he is a friend and welcome to join anytime."

"Don't wanna," Ronon grunted, sounding very much like an oversized child being asked to share his favorite toy. Exactly why he 'didn't wanna' had yet to be made clear.

"Right. Network. Where's Elizabeth figure into all this?" John continued, ignoring the side conversation.

"She is one of the heads of our network. She controls the civilian branch."

"As opposed to..." he prompted. Teyla frowned in confusion, and he explained. "If she's in command of the civilian branch, that means there's a non-civilian branch, which would be what headed by who?"

"As opposed to the military, CO Brigadier General Jack O'Neill of the United States Air Force," Rodney snapped off rapid-fire as he walked in. He smirked as John's eyes went wide.

"General?" he echoed weakly, staring at all three of them. "Christ almighty, how many of you are there?"

"I don't know, about one hundred?" Rodney waved a dismissive hand. "On the civilian side, that is. I don't know about the military, I don't really pay attention to them. Or are you talking about the aware, not just out network?"

John just nodded, which wasn't really an answer, but Rodney appeared to understand it anyways.

"Uh, all the aware on this planet, about... ten million? About two-thirds of which actually have a power. O'Neill doesn't, by the way, which ought to make you feel better."

"Why?" John blurted. "I mean, how did you people even pull that off? Getting a general on your side-"

"We bought him off when he was a lowly corporal," Rodney snipped irritably. "Then we helped him get through the ranks by bribing his superiors and putting the whammy on anyone who said something."

"General O'Neill found us," Teyla spoke over Rodney. "He is a smart man, and he noticed... things. He and Elizabeth agreed to share command of our network."

"So you people are everywhere," John muttered. "Like cockroaches." He shuddered.

"Stop it with the 'you people'," Rodney snapped. "'Us people' saved your scrawny ass when _your_ power was trying to kill you. You're welcome, by the way, no need to worry about it, we only had the Genii declare war on us-"

"Wait a minute. Back up." John made a slicing motion with his hand. "Back up. When you said ten million people are aware... on _this_ planet?"

There was a long, awkward pause at that. Then Rodney huffed in exasperation and turned to Teyla.

"You really didn't tell him anything at all, did you? I mean, this one wasn't even that difficult. All you had to do was say, Hi, I'm Teyla, by the way I'm an alien."

John looked at her, stunned. She sighed tiredly.

"I am from a planet called Athos," she explained. "You might consider my people to have been primitive, but we lived a simple life of peace. Our planet was not easy to farm, so we became traders. We were friends to many."

"Past tense," John noted quietly. He didn't sound so upset any more.

"Yes," Teyla answered, holding her chin up. "We were attacked by an enemy as old as time itself. To my people, they are the nameless ones. To yours, they are Wraith."

"Wraith. Should... should we be worried?" John asked. He didn't look worried, although Teyla supposed that was more an indication of his self-control rather than any lack of concern.

"Oh, yeah," Rodney snorted. "Very worried."

"They attack planets one at a time," Ronon picked up the thread. "Send down a couple scouts first, figure out the people's weaknesses. Then they invade slow and quiet and by the time anyone notices them it's too late to do anything but run. Takes a couple years. Once all the people are dead, they get back on their ships and go to the next world."

"They tried to attack Earth once," Rodney added absently as he wandered over to the coffeemaker.

"We beat them?" John's brows furrowed in confusion. Rodney barked out a laugh.

"No. Not even close. This was about, oh, eleven thousand years ago. The Ancients were still here. They used their weapon- and don't ask what weapon, we have no idea what it is, just that they had it and it's not on Earth anymore- and chased them away. The Ancients, because I know you're going to ask, being a race that somehow figured out how to merge power and science and making ridiculous advances because of it."

"The Ancients are often referred to as the Ancestors," Teyla added. "They were the first people to live on this and many other planets."

"Except for some reason they decided they liked Earth and made a stand here," Rodney continued. "Fought off the Wraith, lived here for another thousand or so years, then randomly started dropping like flies. Some of them also disappeared, which translates as left the planet. No idea how or why."

"Dropping like flies seems like a good reason to leave a planet, Rodney," John drawled, and the Keeper snorted.

"What I meant, Sheppard, is we have no idea why they started dying."

"So how did you get on Earth anyway?" John turned to Teyla again. She glanced briefly at Ronon and John followed the motion. "Uh... both of you?"

"I'm from Sateda," Ronon answered shortly. Like Teyla, he was very much reluctant to speak of the Wraith invasion of his world. Unlike Athos, Sateda's people had been unaware of the existence of the Stargate. Ronon had only found out how to use it by following a Wraith scout, who was using the 'gate to move ahead to the next world. Near Sateda's 'gate, like any other, was a large black stone with the address for Earth in white. The stone also depicted an image, a different image for every different culture, showing that the symbols above would lead to a safe world. According to what Ronon had told Elizabeth, he had dialed Earth from Sateda. According to what Teyla knew, he had conveniently left out that there was a seven-year gap between Sateda's fall and Ronon's arrival to Earth.

She had confronted him over it, once. He hadn't denied anything; nor, however, had he admitted to anything. That he would do something to help the Wraith was laughable, so if he didn't want to speak of those missing years she knew better than to press.

"Right. Sateda." John nodded once. He then looked at Rodney, who had both hands wrapped around his mug of coffee and was smiling happily.

"He's one of yours," Ronon grinned smugly, and John snorted and muttered something softly.

"We arrived on Earth through the Stargate," Teyla said before Rodney could start paying attention and notice this new insult. John turned to her and she explained before he could ask. "It is a device created by the Ancients. It opens a..."

"A wormhole that connects between one 'gate and another," Rodney picked up where she left off. "Each life-supporting planet in our galaxy has a 'gate."

"So we can visit alien worlds?" John asked excitedly.

"No. The Stargate on Earth is one-way only. We can't leave the planet."

"Well, why not?"

"Because we can't," Rodney snapped. He hunched his shoulders up and stormed out, then doubled back to grab the half-full coffee pot and took it with him when he left once more. Teyla hesitated for several moments before looking at John.

"Our network has maintained control over the Stargate since it was first found some fifty years ago," she told him quietly. "We have not yet gotten it to work. Rodney devoted ten years of his life to the 'gate, and that he achieved nothing is a... disappointment to him."

John said nothing, just looked out after the departed Keeper.

"Do the Wraith plan on coming back?" he asked finally.

"Probably," Ronon answered shortly. "It's what they do. Ancients are dead now, nothing to protect this world anymore."

"And without a working Stargate..." Teyla added. There was no need to finish that sentence.

"Something tells me you two have a lot more experience with the Wraith than anyone else," John said. He waited until they both nodded before continuing. "All right. Since you're in the mood to share, I wanna know everything you do about them."

---

Three hours later the kitchen had been turned into something of an impromptu war room, with Ronon and John comparing military horror stories and mapping out battle plans for if and when the Wraith should come. Teyla had left almost immediately- the Athosians had never voluntarily spoken of the Wraith. Evan had come and gone twice; the first time he left armed with a list of groceries and necessary supplies. He'd sighed upon seeing the paper but said nothing.

Rodney was in the basement, as she had known he would be. The furniture had been shoved aside to make room for something anyone familiar with Rodney would recognize- a large piece of fabric, covered with notes and coffee stains and a life-size diagram of a giant ring. The Keeper himself was muttering into his computer. Teyla, recognizing the signs of an obsession revived, let him be.

Ignoring the two boys sitting on the floor, she headed back into the kitchen and made herself a large mug of tea. She then retreated to the front porch and studied the stars- so familiar yet so wrong. She thought of Athos, a quiet and peaceful world with a quiet and peaceful people. She remembered the night the Wraith finally broke cover and attacked- the burning fires, the screams and sobs, the bodies scattered like a child's toys. The Stargate, a silent witness to countless horrors, an imposing presence that always had and would intimidate her even though her people had needed it to survive. The featureless black stone, its white runes slowly fading into sight as the Wraith neared. The slow death of hope.

O'Neill, then a colonel, had been waiting on the other side of the Stargate when she came through. He had a team of twenty Marines armed and ready for war. He had caught her by the arm, made whirlwind introductions- _hi I'm Jack welcome to Earth ignore the loud noises stay here and don't move until I tell you to_- and put her in a corner with the few of her people who had made it through.

A Wraith had been following her. It came through the 'gate moments after she did. O'Neill had ordered it to be taken alive if possible, in one piece for study if not. The Wraith had understood his words and had triggered the self-destruct device on its wrist. O'Neill had had a few things to say then and the Athosian children entertained themselves for days afterwards by loudly and frequently quoting him. The people of Earth tended to react by gaping or turning interesting colors, then often muttering to themselves about idiot colonels who didn't know how to watch their mouths around children.

Since then her people had scattered to the new world's winds. Teyla had tried to keep contact, to maintain a connection between them, but had failed. Her people chose to forget their past and purge all connections, including each other. So Teyla had gone back to O'Neill, who in turn pointed her to a small used bookstore in the green-grey city of Seattle.

Elizabeth, naturally, had Known she was coming.

Teyla curled her feet up under her and sipped at her now-cool tea. Joining this network had been the best thing to happen since her arrival here. She wanted to fight the Wraith- giving them a name had taken away some of their power, had somehow made her less afraid of them. Perhaps there was wisdom in the ways of the people of Earth.

She recalled Rodney's words earlier, about how the Ancients had chosen to fight to protect this planet. She wished she knew why this world. And, more importantly, why they had taken that protection away with them when they had left.

With a sigh Teyla stood. She went back into the kitchen- John and Ronon were now in the family room playing a game called 'smash brothers' or something where one of their characters appeared to be a small pink ball- and washed out her mug. She headed back down to the basement, where Rodney was now making notes on the fabric with a permanent marker. She stood in the doorway until he noticed her and put her to work transcribing notes and sorting papers and making coffee.

Sleep was a long time coming that night, and once it did arrive, even the Keeper's protective field could not keep out the nightmares.


	5. Awakening

Back on schedule, kiddies. Looks like I might actually kinda sorta keep to an updating schedule. Go me! I wanted to have this up this morning, but Daniel suddenly decided he wanted to have a chat with Rodney at the end. Having not yet seen any episode where those two boys actually interact, I kinda winged it in terms of that conversation.

Things are starting to pick up speed again and John's power is starting to sort itself out. Don't think you've got everything figured out yet, though, he's got a few surprises still in store for him.

Disclaimer: don't own nothin'.

---

Chapter Five- Awakening- _The Ancients are gone but not forgotten and John's remembering a little more than he should._

Something was pulling at his hair.

He managed to ignore it at first. Then the gentle tug became a firm yank and he reached up to swat it away. He encountered nothing but air.

"Morning there, Danny boy," a familiar voice drawled from somewhere nearby. Daniel groaned and lifted his head to squint at his visitor.

"Jack?" he mumbled, pointlessly since the general was the only one who could get into Daniel's apartment without an invitation. He glanced around- fell asleep at the dining-room-turned-work table again, no surprise there- then looked back at his visitor.

"Uh huh." Jack retreated to the other side of the table and sat down in the chair, careful not to touch anything on the table- rule number one to survival in Daniel's apartment: never touch anything pre-twentieth century. One eight-foot-tall axe wielding statue coming to life was more than enough, thank you.

"Did you need something?" Daniel asked in confusion. Jack frowned at him for a long moment, forbidding and dark, then sighed slightly and relaxed.

"I tried to call, but you weren't answering. I got a little- look, Daniel, the Genii tried to kill Rodney McKay earlier."

Daniel's gaze had been wandering over the table, trying to find where he had left off. At Jack's words he snapped his eyes back over to the general. He didn't have to ask, didn't even have the chance to try.

"He's fine. Bitchy as ever, according to Lorne."

Fine or not, this meant serious trouble. Daniel sighed and pushed his glasses up so he could rub the heel of his hand against his eyes. This certainly explained Jack's presence.

Exactly when Daniel Jackson had become the personal responsibility of Jack O'Neill, neither could quite tell. It was simply that Daniel had to be near the Stargate to do his job and Jack happened to be there. After almost fifty years of trying and failing to operate the Stargate from their side, they had decided that the physicists and scientists had done everything humanly possible, and that the fault lay within the realm of the paranormal. Therefore the 'gate and its stubborn refusal to work became Daniel's problem, as he was the closest they had to an expert in the power and its uses.

"So what's this thing anyways?" Jack asked, pointedly steering clear of potentially treacherous emotional territory. Daniel looked at the thing in question, a piece of smooth blue-tinted metal that looked as though it had once been a part of something much bigger.

"No idea," he admitted wryly. "We're assuming it's Ancient. It's perfectly safe," he added, since as much as touching stuff was a bad idea Jack was rarely able to restrain himself. Sure enough, he'd barely finished the sentence and the general was scooping up the chunk of metal. He made a face and quickly put it back down.

"Perfectly safe?" he asked, shaking the offended hand. Daniel stared at him for a long moment, confused. Then he stood up- successful on the second try, the first probably earning him a nice big bruise on the knee that impacted the underside of the table- and got a glass of water.

"It vibrates," he said, which Jack obviously already knew, and put the glass down on the table right next to the object. The water trembled minutely, almost too subtle to be seen. "How or why, I can't say. It seems to be a varying effect based on who's nearby. I can't feel it at all." He reached out, touching one finger to the surprisingly chilly metal, and the water stilled. He pulled away and gestured for Jack to touch it. Even as the older man reached over the trembling began again, the glass itself starting to rattle in place when Jack actually touched the thing.

"Huh." Jack stared at the water, then at the object itself. Then, since it apparently bore repeating, he _huh_'ed again. He pulled his hand away, watching as the water steadied itself back to its barely-there vibration.

"According to the refugees from various worlds, all true Ancient technology does this; reacts differently to different people. Most people get the same response as I do. A few get a response like yours. The woman who brought it through the 'gate said, when her twelve-year-old son touched it, it glowed and hummed."

"The boy didn't make it through?" Jack asked, meeting Daniel's gaze briefly. Daniel merely sighed. For whatever reason, children were a favorite of the Wraith; by the time the Wraith launched their attack on a planet most of the world's kids had already vanished.

"When I asked her where she got it, she said it was a piece of an object that had been a gift from someone who came from..." Daniel paused, trying to remember her wording. "A place where the land is metal and the sky is an ocean."

"O-kay," the older man drawled in answer. He reached out and flipped over the piece of metal to study it, pulling his hand away quickly. He wasn't used to things reacting to him like this; matter of fact, he was used to things like this ignoring him, completely unaware of his presence.

The object itself was a simple piece of metal. It looked like it had once been part of a hull, such as on a boat or something. It was a roughly triangular shape, its sides shiny in the way of metal torn by massive stress. Approximately half an inch thick, looked like blue-tinted steel, except was a hell of a lot stronger.

"Hey, this is that thing that stuck itself to the wall!" Jack realized suddenly. He pulled back a little and stared at it. Adjusted as he was to the weird crap that happened around the Stargate and the people that came through it, he'd still been caught off-guard by this one. Daniel allowed himself a quirked smile.

"Yes, this is it. Although in all fairness, it didn't stick itself to the wall, it stuck itself to the steel beam inside the wall. The wall just got in the way."

And that was one of those things that would go down in the history books as a good example of why wandering around a military base carrying an alien artifact was not a good idea. The metal had some element in it that apparently reacted rather violently to electromagnetic waves; an aide had been carrying it past the base's infirmary when the MRI had been running and the metal had sucked the power out of the MRI's magnet. It had gone flying, attaching itself to the nearby wall as solidly as if it was a part of the cement, and repelled all other metal objects with such strength that the corridor had to be shut down. After three months of fruitlessly trying to get it loose it simply let go one day and that was that.

The thing had been handed over to Daniel very quickly after that- disposing of all but the most necessary tests in exchange for less opportunity for a repeat performance- and had been as well-behaved as any inanimate object could. Then again, Daniel didn't have many powerful medical-grade magnets laying around to encourage rebellion.

"So this thing glows... what's so interesting about it?" Jack asked. "I mean, a lot of normal things glow, especially around people like you."

"No, Jack," Daniel groaned. This was something he had explained before and Jack was just as unlikely to listen now as he had the first three times. "The power has no physical form but it is visible, to a certain degree. It's most easily noticed when we contain it and channel it through an object. Our brains interpret it as light. The object isn't actually glowing."

"I think I've heard this before," the general mused, and Daniel fought off the desire to say yes, he has, and if he would bother paying attention _one time_ he would never have to hear it again. Once the urge was reined in, the younger man continued.

"So technically the power doesn't make things glow, unless it's being intentionally used to produce light. But this," and here he picked up the metal, "this thing is different. It has no interaction with the power, either free or tame. The fact that it responds to you only proves it."

Jack eyed the metal fragment with new respect. "So it glows because...?"

"I don't know. Whatever triggers it, it's got something to do with the person touching it and nothing whatsoever to do with their power."

"Old Ancient trick or new breed of power?" Jack asked, and Daniel could only shrug. It was a fair question, since he was basing his findings on the sorts of power he was familiar with, which were no longer the only ones on Earth. Ever since the Stargate had been dug up and people began to filter through, Earth's familiar array of power had begun to change. Some older powers were being forgotten- including a few of Daniel's own eccentric scattering of talents- while new powers arose. It was a cycle of finding and losing and finding again, triggered by any one of a dozen things bust most often by the rise or fall of a powerful society, that had gone on for thousands of years.

There was an easy silence after that, the sort of calm quiet that could only be achieved by two people who had spent years getting used to each other. Daniel swept his gaze over the papers and photos scattered over the table. He was still trying to figure out the Ancient's dialect. Earth's Stargate had a message carved onto its base in Ancient and he _knew_, with a certainty normally reserved for Elizabeth Weir, that translating it would solve all their problems. Well, all their 'gate-related problems; he was pretty sure even the Ancients weren't all-knowing enough to have foreseen their need for a Dummy's Guide to Handling the Genii.

Daniel didn't even realized he'd picked up his pencil and started drawing out the known Ancient alphabet until he suddenly realized Jack had said his name at least twice. He looked up, one eyebrow lifted questioningly.

"Are you done with this?" the general asked, tapping a finger on the table just shy of the chunk of metal. Daniel stared blankly for a long moment, his brain still in Scribe mode.

"Uh, yeah," he said finally. Jack nodded once and stood.

"Good. I'm gonna send it up to Vancouver, give McKay something to work on so he doesn't end up chewing through the walls." At Daniel's confused look, he explained. "I had Weir put him under house arrest until this whole Genii thing is dealt with. Could be months, maybe even years."

And as long as he had access to a computer and a phone line, McKay could make anyone's life a living hell no matter what country he happened to be in. Daniel grabbed the metal and headed into the living room in search of the warded box it had come in. As soon as it was packed in he handed the box over and Jack started to head out.

"Oh, and Daniel?"

The archaeologist paused and turned back. "Yeah?"

"Security's getting stepped up and I'm not taking any chances. You don't answer your phone again, you get shipped up north too."

And on that pleasant note, Jack left.

---

One moment John was sleeping soundly; the next he was sitting bolt upright in the bed and staring around a little wildly. He found himself to be confused, hungry, and sore as hell.

A few moments' grace to remember the previous day solved the first problem. Pulling on some clothes and staggering down to the kitchen to help himself to some cereal and coffee took care of the second. The third issue was a bit trickier. The pain was the mixed result of being stunned and tossed around by his own and McKay's power, not exactly familiar experiences for him. He stretched carefully, feeling the tense knots loosening with the motion, then headed outside.

There was no official path around the estate, but there was a worn trail that ringed the inside of the fence. John circled the place three times before the morning's pain had given way to a more comfortable ache. Once back inside, the smell of coffee- real coffee, good coffee, not the cheap store brand in the kitchen- seized his attention. Follow the smell of coffee, find the master of this lair. He hadn't seen McKay since the conversation about the Stargate the previous afternoon. Some part of him whispered that he ought to be grateful. He told that voice to stuff it.

He wandered down the hallway and down the stairs, into a large and well-furnished basement. The space was huge, easily a thousand square feet, partitioned by shape into one large room and three small ones. In one of the small rooms was everything any mad scientist worth his salt could possibly need, including a huge cupboard filled with bottles stamped with the worryingly familiar biohazard symbol. In another was a table bearing a row of laptops. The last small room had another table, this one with a handful of... things. Technological gizmos John had never seen before.

The big room was empty; instead of furniture it had a single giant piece of some sort of cloth spread out. Drawn on it in thick, bold lines was some sort of giant circle. Around the circle were thousands of haphazard scribbles in various colors. John paused on the last stair, studying the design and abstractly wondering where the hell McKay got his hands on a piece of fabric that big. Then he took the last step and peered around the large room.

There was a door tucked into the corner, between the gizmo room and the wall with the stairs. John walked over and pushed it open, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee hitting him. Down a short hallway, he found himself in a small apartment-like area. He'd had a flat like it in college, where the entire place was one decent-sized room with the bed in one corner and the kitchen in another and only a small postage-stamp-sized bathroom.

"Just so you know, I didn't actually have to let you in here."

McKay was standing at the kitchen area, mug of coffee in one hand and laptop in the other. His hands were stained with marker ink and his fingers tapped out a staccato rhythm on the laptop's case. His eyes were bloodshot and slightly glazed. His normal acerbic wit had abandoned him. He hadn't changed or shaved or probably even slept since John had last seen him and he looked tired and vulnerable and utterly endearing.

"Yeah, I know," John answered, taking a few steps closer to the Keeper. "Ice-cold shower, remember?"

Rodney smirked at that and John surprised by the gentle, almost friendly edge to both that look and his words. "Magic soap, remember?"

Whatever hostile, fuck-the-world kick McKay had been on, he was either too tired to remember or to care. John kept moving until he was leaning a hip against the counter next to the other man. He glanced at the small crinkly pouch of coffee beans; he'd seen it in the grocery store before, one bag of the stuff would have set him back two weeks' rent in his apartment in Boulder.

"When was the last time you slept?" he asked, trying not to say something to upset the Keeper. He liked this McKay a lot better than the man he had first met.

"I don't know," Rodney admitted, looking as though he knew he should be bothered by his answer but wasn't. "I have coffee."

"I noticed." John nodded once, folding his arms loosely and studying those tired blue eyes.

"Is that why you're here? To steal my coffee?"

"Nope. Just wanted to see what was down here."

"Oh."

And that was it. Rodney proceeded to drain half the coffee pot and John simply watched him. Relaxed and complacent were two words he felt were rarely associated with this man; seeing him so calm and still was almost eerie.

"So what's with the circle thing?" John asked when the coffee was gone. Rodney frowned at him. "On the ground, out there," he added.

"Stargate."

"How's it work?" And that, apparently, was either the best or worst thing to ask, since Rodney's eyes lit up and he launched into a long explanation in which John might have caught one word out of twenty. As he talked he caught John by the elbow and dragged him back into the main room so he could point out various parts on the diagram. John was content to just watch that expressive face and those never-still hands until something in his brain that was actually processing the torrent of words went _huh?_

"Wait, what?"

Rodney stopped mid-word, train of thought derailed. "What? Wait what?"

"You just said- the Ancients couldn't use the power?"

"No," Rodney answered slowly. "They couldn't. They found ways to tap into it and tie it into their technology and use it to- to pad their results, you could say, but the Ancients themselves couldn't use the power. Not like we can."

"Wow." John looked down at the giant sheet before him and studied the ring- according to what Rodney had just said, the real thing was made out of some material called naquadah or something. Very heavy, hard to find and harder to work with. He thought of the Easter Island heads and the Egyptian pyramids. Granted, any race that could build an interconnected planetary network of wormholes wasn't exactly on the same level as primeval humans, but still. Up until just now he had always contributed the Ancients' success in large part to their mastery of the power. Turns out, they hadn't mastered it; they couldn't even use it at all.

"Wow," he said again, as the implications sank in.

"Yes, impressive, isn't it?" Rodney mused. "Can you imagine what they could have accomplished if they could use it? They might even have managed to stick around."

John glanced over and saw the Keeper's face lit up. Clearly getting to meet these people was a pet dream of his, and he was greatly annoyed with the universe at large for the cosmic joke that it had pulled on him. He decided not to point out that the Ancients probably did everything they could in regards to sticking around and, if they could feel anything, were certainly even more annoyed than Rodney that they failed.

"So what's that then?" he asked instead, gesturing towards an odd blob off to the right of the circle. Rodney blinked at it.

"That's the... well, we don't really have a name for it. It's a big black rock. On other worlds, it has Earth's 'gate address on it. Near as we can figure, someone figured out Earth was safe from the Wraith and put those things near every 'gate they could find as a sort of road map."

"Ancients?"

"Probably not. The Stargate was buried in a sealed underground room in Giza for some four thousand years. We only found it about fifty years ago, and people first started coming through it about five years after that."

_Not right, not right. Making assumptions about what you don't know. Won't get where you want to go if you can't admit to not knowing the way._

John frowned at the whisper in his mind, the same soft voice as the previous day. He found himself carefully stepping around the fabric and sitting down next to the rock outline. Following some unknown urge, his fingers started to trace out intricate seven-symbol patterns over the cloth surface. "Any idea where Earth's road map points to?"

"Uh, no. From what the refugees tell us, the symbols don't even appear on the stone until the Wraith get near."

"So maybe..." he was still drawing out those symbols, he noticed, repeating one in particular time and again. "Maybe it was the Ancients who put them there."

"No, it wasn't," Rodney snapped in his ­_try not to be more stupid than absolutely necessary_ tone. "Were you not listening? Earth's Stargate has been operational for only fifty years. Whoever put those stones there must have done so since then."

"Unless the stones don't point to Earth in specific." John leaned over and picked up a black sharpie lying nearby, then scooted back and started sketching out those strings of symbols on the very edge of the cloth. "You said the Ancients couldn't use the power themselves, but that they found a way to use it secondhand via their technology. What if they put those stones there as an anti-Wraith measure and used some sort of power-based machine to identify and locate the planet safest from the Wraith? So before Earth's Stargate was dug up, the safest planet was somewhere else, but once we found the 'gate, the stones changed to show Earth's address instead."

By then he'd written out at least a half dozen of the symbol groups. He only wrote out the first six symbols since the seventh never changed. Rodney was standing over his shoulder, staring.

"How do you know those?" he asked, sounding confused and alarmed and angry, as if he had any right to get upset. John was the one being hijacked by his own brain and used as some sort of information conduit.

"I don't know," John muttered despairingly. He leaned over and drew out that constant seventh symbol, a capital A minus the line in the middle and a small circle balanced on its point. He drew the symbol much larger than the tiny scribbles following the edge of the cloth. "What does that mean?"

"That's Earth's origin point. Basically the name the Ancients gave the planet." Rodney knelt beside him, tugging at the cloth so he could better see the marching row of symbols.

"This one's wrong." John tapped the other end of the sharpie on the last group.

"Wrong how?"

"I don't know," he ground out. "It's missing one."

"One what? Each address only has six coordinates. Seven if you count the origin point, but you're leaving it off all of them."

Stargate addresses. Of course. Not that that actually explained _what the hell was going on here_, but at least it made sense to someone. John gave a half-hysterical laugh and shoved his hand almost violently through his hair. Unfortunately the hand in question was the one holding the marker, and he ended up with a thick black line leading straight up his forehead.

"It's just wrong," he said helplessly. Then, half-pleading, "What the hell is wrong with _me_?"

"Nothing," Rodney answered, and he would have been more convincing if he'd been able to keep his voice from trembling. "Nothing's wrong. It's just- you've got- you're a wild power, weird things happen around wild powers all the time."

"Weird things like this?" John asked desperately, gesturing to the scribbles in front of him.

"Well, no, not exactly. No wild power is exactly alike, though, so this just may be some new variation of the power, it's always changing-"

"So you're saying this isn't normal." He wasn't going to freak out. Was _not_.

"I'm saying there is no normal," Rodney snapped, and hearing him impatient and annoyed did wonders to soothe John. "Not around you."

John grunted, not sure how much he really liked that answer, hastily stabbing the cap back onto the marker and throwing it towards the center of the sheet. He lunged to his feet in one smooth motion and paced away. Rodney meanwhile took up his place and began to mutter to himself as he studied the scribbles.

"Are you sure-?" John began, and Rodney cut him off.

"My seventh birthday, I locked my parents out of our house," he said casually. "They were fighting again- they were always fighting- and I was so sick of it I sort of just... asked the house if it would not let them in." He sat up and glanced at John. "They were locked out for three days. They had to stay in a hotel room. My father's car was in the driveway but he didn't have the keys, so they had to take a cab or the bus everywhere. I only let them back in because I got tired of changing Jeannie's diapers."

"Uh huh," John murmured, not entirely sure what he was supposed to think of this. Rodney continued obliviously.

"Some of my happier childhood memories were from those days. Not to mention I now had a power useful for keeping annoying little sisters out of my room."

"That... explains a lot," John smirked. "I mean, the whole happiest memories thing. Not why it's suddenly show-and-tell time."

"It's supposed to make you feel better," the Keeper grumbled.

"By hearing you had a fucked-up childhood?" It was just far too easy to bait Rodney, and a good deal more comfortable than thinking about what had just happened.

"By showing you how weird things happen around us!" Rodney's hands flailed- there was no better word to describe the motion- in aggravation. John paused and turned to face him properly, meeting those clear blue eyes that couldn't lie to save the world.

"So it's just my power?"

"What else could it be?" Rodney asked in exchange, and John sighed. There was the problem: if it was something to do with the power, he had people who could help him and who understood what was going on. If it wasn't, he was screwed.

"Right. What else. Well, I'm gonna go now. You should probably get some sleep." He glanced once more at the cloth on the floor, then headed up the stairs.

Ronon walked past just as he reached the top stair. As John took the last step, the Satedan pivoted on one foot to study him closely.

"What?" John demanded.

"Your power's all wired," came the reply, as if that was supposed to mean something.

"Okay," John muttered, turning his head to regard Ronon from the corner of his eyes. "Good-wired or bad-wired?"

Ronon, he of the silver tongue, grunted and shrugged. "Like you were using it. Like it was tame."

"Is it?"

"Dunno."

Clearly the art of conversation would be dead and buried if it were up to Ronon. John decided it might be a good time to track down Teyla and bug her with the eight thousand questions he couldn't or wouldn't ask the other two guys in the house.

"Where's McKay?" Ronon asked before John could decide where he was going.

"Downstairs, hopefully getting some sleep before he collapses. Why?"

Ronon's dark eyes tracked over to the stairs, then panned across the wall as though he could see through it. Which wasn't entirely impossible, John told himself, since he had absolutely no idea what Ronon's power was, only that he had inherited it. He couldn't read the Satedan at all, and so when Ronon abruptly switched gears, John was caught completely off-guard.

"Heard you were military."

"Uh, yeah," John answered warily. Not quite a question or statement, leading to something he couldn't identify.

"McKay's got a home gym."

Still the lightbulb wasn't going on. "And...?"

Ronon graced him with a slight grin. "You wanna spar?"

"Wanna- wanna spar?" Now he got it. "You'd kick my ass."

"Don't doubt it," came the too-cheerful reply. "Be something to do, though, plus it'd help stabilize your power."

As if being on a first-name basis with the floor could be considered helpful. Still, John had let himself get complacent since his discharge, and the idea of shaping back up appealed to him.

"Bring on the pain," he said with a careless shrug, and Ronon's grin went full-out feral and a tiny bit approving. John factored this into the imminent rearranging of his internal organs and tried not to groan.

Sometimes he couldn't help but think that someone out there hated him.

---

Rodney wasn't really asleep so much as comatose when his cell phone started ringing. He snuffled into his pillow and yanked the blanket up over his head, which did absolutely nothing to help block out the sound but served fairly well as a defiant gesture.

The shrill noise stopped drilling holes into his eardrums after four rings and there was glorious silence once more. Rodney had just started to drift off when the sound came back. He whined loudly, seized a double handful of pillow, and proceeded to beat the phone into submission. Unfortunately, this tactic caused the small machine to bounce right off the bedside table and hit the floor at just the right angle to snap open. He could vaguely hear a tinny voice saying his name as he groaned and reached out to grope blindly for the source of his annoyance.

"This had better be really, really important," he calmly informed whoever-the-hell was calling him. Anyone who knew him would know that the lack of harsh words and loud tones spelled doom indeed.

"I could say the same to you," came the response in a voice Rodney might have recognized if he'd felt like putting any effort into it. "Since I've basically been ordered to drag myself and all my research out to Vancouver. Oddly enough, no one has bothered to tell me why; I got the impression they don't know either."

Jackson, had to be. Rodney levered himself onto his elbows and glanced around. He was in the basement still, having collapsed onto the bed about an hour after Sheppard had all but bolted. The nearby alarm clock showed that he'd gotten about four hours' sleep. Rodney had trained himself early on in life to get by with precious little sleep and had never lost that ability. Four hours was good enough. A quick check-in with the house showed all three of his current boarders still on the grounds, Sheppard and Teyla in the house tiself and Ronon pacing the boundary fence like a caged lion.

"Well, I've got something out here you might find interesting. Bear in mind that I am not actually admitting that your studying dusty old pots and statues in any way resembles real science; however, I do admit that you might be in a better position to understand and use this new source of information."

The archaeologist gave a tired laugh. "Why, thank you, Rodney. That was the most backhanded compliment I've gotten since... well, since the last time I talked to you. So what is this new source? Did you find some way to activate the Ancient devices?"

Rodney rolled out of the bed and wandered into the main room, turning to regard the table full of Ancient knickknacks. He may be officially off the Stargate riddle-solving team, but he still got first dibs on the artifacts brought to Earth by refugees, never mind that he occasionally had to send Zelenka or Simpson down to Cheyenne to retrieve a few of the more interesting things Jackson wasn't quite willing to give up.

The device on the end, which he had come to realize was some sort of Ancient flashlight, was still glowing a bright harsh blue. He'd watched it slowly come to life as Sheppard had sat down to write out Stargate addresses he had never seen before. After the man had left, he'd spent an hour going over the device with a fine-tooth comb and eventually came to the conclusion that supported his original hypothesis- the thing was meant for nothing more than giving off light.

He had no intention of telling Sheppard about this. Not for a while, at least. The last thing he needed was to scare off his living version of the Ancient devices' on switch.

"Yes and no," he said in reply to Jackson's question. "Yes, I found a way to activate them, but no, nothing useful's come from them so far."

"How?" Jackson sounded interested now. "I mean, we've tried everything-"

"Seems I have something you don't," Rodney interrupted, and if he sounded cheerfully smug it was because he was. "John Sheppard."

"John Sheppard- a person? You found one of the children of the Ancients?"

"He is _not_ a child of the Ancients," the Keeper snapped. God, he hated that phrase, even more now that it applied to that smirking bastard. Even if Sheppard wasn't as offensive as Rodney wished he would be so he could justify hating the man.

"It's just a phrase, it doesn't actually mean anything. He is one, though, right?"

Rodney heard the naked hope in the archaeologist's voice. He looked at the blue light splashed across the wall, then at the Stargate coordinates sketched across the fabric spread on the floor.

"He's definitely something. What that something is, though..."

"Is more my field than yours, right. I'm gonna- I have to call Jack, see if I can find my passport-"

"Uh, no, not yet. Give it a few weeks, Sheppard's power still needs to stabilize." Rodney wandered back into the apartment area and put on a new pot of coffee. More sleep at this point was doubtful.

"Stabilize?" Jackson echoed blankly. "Why do they need to stabilize?"

"He's a wild power," Rodney answered, not bothering to ask if anyone had told him that before. Sheppard was Elizabeth's pet project, Jackson O'Neill's. The two leaders were aware of most of the other's actions but rarely filled their subordinates in on them. It was a case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing; only a few people, such as Evan Lorne, worked both sides of the network.

Jackson wasn't happy about being delayed but understood the need to wait until Sheppard was no longer a volatile time bomb waiting to go off. He dragged every detail of the entire basement encounter out of Rodney, then mentioned that he was sending up the magnetic-wave-eating chunk of metal and asked if he could see how it reacted around Sheppard. Rodney kicked up a fuss at being ordered around and insulted the archaeologist and hung up feeling much better about everything in general.

When he had called Elizabeth just before dropping into bed, she had informed him that she'd already started making the necessary calls. She didn't know the fine details, but she Knew that Jackson's work, if not the man himself, needed to be relocated closer to Sheppard.

Daniel Jackson was, although Rodney would never admit it even under threat of death, as intelligent and successful in his chosen fields as Rodney. More interesting was his power- or, more rather, his powers, since he had several. Of them, his main powers were empathy, the ability to sense people's emotions, and Scribing. A Scribe was a person who could learn foreign languages just by listening to it or reading it enough. The fact that he had that power was somewhat of a frustration for him, for his scattering of talents meant he didn't really excel at any one thing, but rather was good at them all. Unfortunately 'good' wasn't cutting it when it came to mastering the Ancient dialect. He had just enough power to _see_ his goals yet not enough to actually _reach_ them. Rodney wasn't sure he could have dealt with that sort of torture.

As much as Rodney might resent the man for being given the Stargate problem, he was quite willing to admit when he was out of his depth and pass things over to someone who knew what they were doing. Just so long as he didn't have to admit it out loud, and the someone he was passing it over to recognized his bitching and delaying as face-saving tactics.

Rodney plucked at his shirt, which he had been wearing for three days straight. He poured himself a single mug of coffee and left the rest and headed upstairs. He needed a shower and a change of clothes. Maybe he'd have a chat with Ronon about how his pacing on the edge of the safe zone was quite possibly the most annoying thing he could be doing. Then again, knowing Ronon, maybe not.

When he came back down to the family room fresh from his shower, Sheppard was sprawled on the couch, long legs stretched halfway across the room. Rodney kicked at a foot and the infuriating man pitched a handful of popcorn at him. The original Doctor Who was playing on TV and Rodney found himself sitting on the couch next to Sheppard and stealing handfuls of popcorn when he suddenly remembered that he had more important things to do. Except, by that point, Ronon was on Sheppard's other side and Teyla was curled up in the nearby armchair and Sheppard himself was wriggling free of the couch's deathgrip and searching through Rodney's DVD collection in search of something that wasn't, to quote Ronon, 'old crap'.

It wouldn't occur to him for several days that that was the moment when the loneliness made by Jeannie's leaving had finally faded.


	6. Stable

And we're getting into the thick of it. Pretty soon it's gonna get real interesting. Also, I'd say the Earth-based part of the story is over half done. The Pegasus part will be much, much longer.

I included a description of Ronon's power since it has been brought to my attention that I have failed to do so before. I apologize for this. I actually had it in an earlier chapter but spazzed out and erased it for unknown reasons.

For some reason, the chapters posted on Thursday tend to be longer and go up earlier in the day, even though I have one less day to write. Maybe it's because something in my brain goes _dun wanna write it's a weekend_ and I somehow expect the chapter to magically write itself while I goof off. Huh.

Disclaimer: me no own.

---

Chapter 6- Stable- _John's power stabilizes itself and the Genii have a plan._

With four people of complete opposite personalities trapped into a house, even one as big as McKay's, there should have been serious issues. John was honestly surprised when there weren't; in fact, the four of them seemed to somehow click.

The days started to run together again in a bittersweet sort of way. They were hard to distinguish from one another in all but the one aspect of the countdown to the inevitable moment John's power stabilized and he was once again safe to let loose in public. Once that happened, he had no idea what sort of treatment to expect or what sort of plans he ought to be making for the future. It had been made clear multiple times that there was a place for him in Weir's network should he want it. A part of him, however, envied Ronon's free-roaming lifestyle, even if the Satedan barked a harsh laugh and told him to not be stupid when he asked about it.

Mornings were peaceful, as Ronon was still mild-mannered with lingering sleep and Rodney was either asleep or buried eyeball-deep in some intellectual problem and Teyla was always serene and calm. John would spend the crisply cold mornings lazing around the house after lapping the gate a few times. Ronon turned out to be a decent running partner, though to be honest claiming them to actually be _partners_ was something of an insult to Ronon. Breakfast was mostly cereal, although one day Teyla- who was allowed to leave the house- went shopping and came back with a couple of grapefruits that she had found God only knows where, which she was unable to get past the gate since Rodney's power wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the things. John made the mistake of asking Rodney what he had against grapefruit and Rodney went on an anti-citrus rant that could probably be heard in Seattle.

Once, John followed his nose into the basement again and managed to sneak off with three quarters of a pot of Rodney's hideously expensive coffee, the Keeper himself oblivious to the world as he messed around in Weird Gizmo Corner. Rodney caught on fairly quickly but by then John had transferred the coffee into a thermos and left the pot on the upstairs kitchen counter. He was long gone by the time Rodney made it upstairs.

Lunch was whatever he felt like grabbing, which thanks to Rodney's niece tended to be peanut butter and jelly since the ingredients were plentiful and it required very little effort to make. The other three were off doing other stuff and he had the chance to eat in peace and think about things. Sometimes, in those quiet moments, he found himself itching to draw Stargate addresses again. Once he gave in to that urge only to find himself writing the same one over and over and getting more and more frustrated because there was something missing and he was _so close_ it literally hurt.

He broke the spell that time by putting his fist through the wall. Teyla scolded him as she drew wards on the uninjured part of his hand to heal the two bones he'd fractured. Rodney merely glanced at the paper John had been writing on and told the house to fix itself, which was certainly an interesting thing to watch, before vanishing back into that damned basement.

Afternoons were the active part of the day. Ronon translated his agreeing to spar once to mean 'whenever you feel like sparring, feel free to drag me away from whatever I might be doing so you can reduce me to a funny-colored smear on the floor'. At least he stuck to a schedule- at two in the afternoon, for one hour, John got to prove how woefully inadequate his own training was. He got better in a surprising hurry, though, probably because it was either that or die a slow, painful death. During day four he caught sight of Teyla practicing with her sticks and made the mistake of wandering a little too close. Somehow, he found himself signing up for stick-fighting lessons to take the place of sparring every other day. Teyla told him, a little too sweet and innocent to be trustworthy, that such rigorous physical training would help teach him the self-control he would need to deal with his power.

The second sparring match with Ronon after the new arrangement, the Satedan make a casual comment about why McKay even needed a home gym when he never used it. There was a moment's pause. Then they exchanged slightly wild grins, confirming that they were thinking the same thing. They fetched the loudly protesting Keeper from his lair and ran him through a basic self-defense workout. The process was repeated the day after next, except that time Rodney read them both the riot act and stormed out.

He was back ten minutes later and showed up on his own almost every day after that.

Evenings quickly became the true highlight of the day. The four of them tended to find themselves drawn to the same place at about six or so, the only true gathering during the day. Sometimes it was nothing more than pizza in the kitchen. Sometimes one of them tried cooking, an interesting experience since it appeared none of them could actually do so. Sometimes dinner itself took a backseat to the entertainment and the four would camp out in the family room, not exactly sharing popcorn and whatever candy Rodney had begged Teyla into getting and fighting over what to watch. One day Ronon snitched Rodney's credit card and came back with about three hundred dollars' worth of DVD's. Teyla made him take the porn back.

They had visitors on occasion. Every other day for about a week, Lorne dropped by. He rarely stayed for longer than a few minutes, just checking in to make sure the two grounded ones weren't leaving the house and going out to get them whatever they needed. The last day of his visits, he told John- whom he had slowly warmed up to- that he was being reassigned to a base in Arkansas to so as to be close to Elizabeth. Not that she really needed watching over, but better safe than sorry. A young black man named Bates picked up Lorne's house-call duties after he left. None of John's three house-mates seemed enamored of the man, which John got the feeling was duly earned by the virtue of Bates being something of an asshole. He didn't stick around to talk like Lorne did and gave John long, uncomfortable stares when he was around. The nerdy European guy stopped by almost as many times, though he spent most of the time in the basement with Rodney. The two of them spent most of the time trading insults and arguing, half in English and half in what John eventually recognized as Czech. Despite the continuous yelling the two seemed to get along brilliantly and one time John wandered into the basement, they were jabbering excitedly at each other, finishing the other's sentences as they darted around the huge room.

John found himself watching his three house-mates, studying them, taking them in. These people had seen him at his worst, had stood by his side as his world turned inside out and everything he thought he knew about everything turned out to be wrong. There was no passing of judgment, no derision or condescension. Well, there was Rodney, but he treated all of them that way, and John could see now that even his most pointed comments weren't really intended to hurt.

None of them really knew what to do about Christmas, so they more or less ignored the holiday looming over them. John and Rodney weren't supposed to leave the house anyways and Teyla and Ronon had only been on Earth for three years each and still didn't get why it was such a big deal. Neither of the two Earth natives had a good family life and so wouldn't be missed. They were content to leave it at that.

---

On the twenty-seventh, John's power randomly decided to stabilize itself. It did so in the space of about twenty seconds and immediately decided to announce itself in the most ostentatious way possible.

---

He made another circuit of the room before pausing in the open doorway, peering into bathroom. Ronon saw him and narrowed his eyes into a glare to prevent John asking the same question for the fifth time. Teyla ignored them both as she sorted through the first aid kit Rodney had passed off to her. She pulled out a roll of gauze and some medical tape and handed the rest of the kit back to John.

"I'm just making sure," he said, refusing to let Ronon intimidate him. "I mean, I've never done anything like that before."

"I should hope not," Rodney scoffed. John turned to scowl at him. During his Air Force days he could send even superior officers running for cover with that glare. Rodney spared him a dismissive glance and ignored him.

"Got worse from teaching kids to spar," Ronon grunted. He leaned away from Teyla as she reached out with the alcohol-soaked cleaning pad; she grabbed his shoulder with on firm hand and held him in place as she drew the pad across the gash over his left eyebrow.

"I just don't- how did I even do that?" John glanced around at the other three. The looks they exchanged told him he was missing something rather obvious.

"Hello, wild power?" Rodney moved away from the bathroom doorway as the astringent smell got stronger.

"Yeah, but Ronon wasn't using his power- were you?" This accompanied by a glance at the Satedan who grunted a no. "And last I checked, I only hijack powers when they're being actively used around me."

"Unless, of course, you didn't need to hijack anyone else's powers because you have your own," Rodney pointed out.

"So my power's stabilized?" John asked, turning to regard the Keeper.

"Hard to say for certain, since you're obviously a wild power in every meaning of the words, but, yeah. Pretty much."

John let his breath out in a rush and collapsed back against the wall. He rolled onto a shoulder and peered into the bathroom again.

"You're sure you're alright?"

Ronon literally growled. "Dammit, Sheppard, I said _fuck off_!"

Teyla reached out to lay a hand on John's arm in reassurance. "He is fine," she told him. "It is a small cut, nothing more."

"He's just pissed 'cause you caught him off-guard and Specialists are supposed to be ready for that sort of thing," Rodney added. Ronon tried to stand but Teyla pushed him back down- she was surprisingly strong and had a better angle.

John decided to take their words to heart and backed off a little. Rodney gestured for him to follow and walked out of the room. After one last glance toward the Satedan, John went.

"So what exactly happened?" the Keeper asked. He led the way into the kitchen and dug a beer out of the fridge, handing it over without comment. John highly doubted that getting drunk was in any way going to help, but he still took it gratefully.

"I don't know," he admitted, ignoring Rodney's protest and using the counter to pop the top off the bottle. "I mean, one moment it's all completely normal, he's kicking my ass just like every other time, the next he's flying through the air. I didn't even touch him."

"You wouldn't have had to. Sounds like your power is reactionary- it senses a threat and lashes out. Most likely tied in to your emotions somehow. You're probably never going to be able to control when or how strongly it reacts, so you're going to need to learn how to restrain it and keep it from hurting people who don't deserve to have their brains smeared across the floor."

"Wait," John ordered, making the back-up gesture with one hand. "You're saying that my power stabilizing itself actually makes me... _more_ dangerous?"

"Before you were only dangerous to yourself and to those who used their power near you. Now you're dangerous to everyone. So, yeah."

"Great."

"The good news being that, thanks to your being almost inhuman in terms of self-control, learning to control your power should take you only a few days. The bad news being, if anyone ever really pisses you off ever again, you're probably going to kill them without meaning to."

"You know, you really could have just stopped after that first part," John drawled.

Rodney made a _hmm_ noise and tilted his head to the side, studying John like he was some sort of new piece of Ancient junk. John shifted uncomfortably under that steady gaze. He ducked his head and hitched his shoulders up and started to turn away to put his back to the Keeper. Before he could, however, Rodney snorted and pulled out another beer.

"Follow me," he ordered, heading out of the kitchen and into the main hallway. John hesitated, then ducked after him.

"Why? What's going on?"

"I need to show you something, probably something you should've seen the first time this happened but oh well. It might help you understand a few things or it might just make it worse, but it's..." Rodney paused and sighed. "It's worth a shot, right?"

"Maybe, if I had even the faintest idea what you're talking about," John answered, though his opinion apparently wasn't necessary since Rodney was already halfway down the basement stairs and showed no sign of having actually paid attention. John rolled his eyes and followed.

He balked just before stepping into Weird Gizmo Corner, some unnamed instinct telling him he didn't really want to go any further. Rodney had no such compunctions and walked right up to the table. He hefted a piece of blue-ish metal and held it out.

"What's that?" John asked suspiciously.

"Just take it," Rodney huffed, and John did as ordered. The second he touched it, the metal began to glow a deep, intense shade of electric blue and damn near vibrated right out of his grip. He let it drop, cursing ripely when the chunk of metal nailed his left foot.

"What the hell is this?" he demanded, sliding a hip onto the table so he could kick off his shoe and massage the abused toes.

"It's Ancient," Rodney explained. "For reasons unknown, most Ancient devices can only be activated by certain people. Most times they just sit around being useless, but occasionally we get someone who can make them work. With you, this activation ability seems to be tied into your power. Every time you have one of your little... attacks, your power starts getting riled up."

John put his foot down and glanced at the still-glowing metal chunk on the floor. "So what you're saying is, everything that's been happening to me is actually normal?"

"Normal, no. The ability to activate Ancient technology is extraordinarily rare. In fact, you're the first Earth native we've found who could do so. Now, granted, that doesn't mean you're the only one, just that you're the only one we've found. It's not like we can put an ad in the paper or something, although we could-"

"Rodney," John growled, verbally herding the Keeper back on track. "We're not recruiting people here, we're just trying to figure out what the hell is happening to me, remember?"

"Right. Anyways, I've talked this over with- others, and as near as we can tell you've always had the activation ability, but once you picked up your wild power, the two kind of... meshed together. Therefore, you can't use one without somehow interacting with the other."

"So this whole thing is because..." John gestured around him, trying to indicate everything that was happening to him, and found himself drawing out that damn Stargate address in the air in front of him.

"Because you're a freak who won the genetic lottery not once, but twice? Yes."

Not exactly the most reassuring thing John had ever heard, but if it made sense to someone and they weren't worried about it, he supposed he ought to be grateful.

"So how long am I gonna have to deal with this crap?" he asked.

"What, you mean the...?" Rodney mimicked his air-writing motions and John nodded. "Can't say for certain, but most likely your entire life. It'll probably get better as you learn how to control- well, as you learn how to work with your power."

John stared at him for several long moments. "I think I want a second opinion on that."

"Oh, yes, I agree. Let's go get one. There's a hospital not far from here, and it's even got a mental ward, so when the doctor hears you blathering on about power and ten-thousand-year-old technology and sedates you, they won't have to drag you very far."

"You said yourself you aren't the expert on how this works," John snapped back. "So who is? Call them in."

"That would be Daniel Jackson, and I already have."

"So why are we having this conversation?"

Rodney threw his hands into the air and paced away, barking out a long string of insults that started in English and wandered its way through at least four other languages. John watched, amused by the rant.

"All right," the Keeper muttered as he came back around to stand in front of John again. "All right. You may not have figured this out already, since you're kind of stupid-"

"Hey!"

"-but this could be the greatest opportunity we have to learn about the Ancients. Think about it- if you turn on the right device, you could find a way to open the Stargate, or maybe even locate the weapon the Ancients used on the Wraith. The possibilities are endless."

"I'm not stupid," John protested, and Rodney gave him what he now recognized as the patented McKay Glare, the one that could scare off an angry grizzly bear. He smirked cheerfully at the look- Rodney wasn't the only one who could develop an immunity to the other's intimidation tactics.

"I said kind of. There's still hope for you yet, although I may have to give up on that."

"Uh huh," John muttered, still smirking. "Just admit it, McKay, you only love me because I'm the Ancient version of an on switch."

"Oh, absolutely. That's the only reason I've let you stay in my house and eat my food for three weeks."

Knowing Elizabeth's power and skill with people, there was the very real chance that John had been masterfully manipulated into this whole situation. If that turned out to be true, he could very easily get upset with Elizabeth herself. However, if there was some sort of grand scheme going on behind the curtains, Rodney was as oblivious as John, if not more so. So John merely grinned at the Keeper as they fell into their now-familiar snark routine.

"So when is this Jackson getting here?" he asked.

"Depends," Rodney answered vaguely. He'd grabbed the glowing metal and was running some sort of scanner over it carefully. "He's in Colorado right now, but he's been wanting to meet you for weeks, so he'll probably be getting up here as soon as he gets the message. Also, you're gonna need to watch yourself around him. He's an empath and people as emotionally constipated as you can hurt him if you're not careful."

"Great." Emotionally constipated. Wasn't _that_ an endearing term. "So what is that thing?"

"No idea. It used to be a part of something a lot bigger, but somewhere along the line..." He hefted the object, showing John the edge of the metal where it had clearly been sheared off.

"Then why's it glow?"

"I'm sorry, do you see an instruction manual on this thing?" Rodney snapped impatiently. "No? Then I can't tell you so stop asking questions before I have to remove the 'kind of'."

It took John a moment to figure that one out. He sighed and shook his head. Sure, he was no McKay, but he wasn't an idiot either. It was just incredibly hard to appear intelligent when you found yourself tossed into a situation you had no way of preparing for and had to ask approximately nine hundred questions a day just to have a basic understanding of what was going on.

"Is that all you wanted me for?" he asked, feeling suddenly tired. He had been warned that using his power would tax both physical and mental resources, and he would need to work on his stamina. He hadn't understood that before, but he got it now- his entire body had a residual soreness and he had the faint impression of a headache. Right now it was nothing serious, not even noticeable if he wasn't looking for it, but another few outbursts like with Ronon and he'd be feeling it for days.

Rodney looked at him for a long moment, then turned his gaze to the table with its two-dozen-odd devices.

John groaned and reached for the first one.

---

Once, when she had been just a young girl, Sora had been sent into the under-city on an errand for her father. She had taken a shortcut through a training gym and had paused, entranced by the sight of Commander Kolya. He was a powerful man in the Genii echelon, the closest thing to a military leader her mercenary people had.

Commander Kolya had been teaching a small group of students the fine art of infiltrating the supposedly impenetrable stronghold. He had seen her, huddled into the far corner of the room, saw her and ignored her. He didn't demand that she leave; if anything, he had shifted a little so he was addressing her as well. Three days later, she had been officially inducted into the ranks of the Genii elite forces, provided of course she survived the training. She had, but that was neither here nor there.

That day, the Commander had told his students plus one twelve-year-old girl that there was no such thing as a perfect defense, that there was always a weakness in every wall. Sora was of the opinion that he might not have said such things had he known of Earth's Keepers.

She dropped the binoculars- one good thing about Earth was the ease with which anyone could obtain just about anything- and sighed, watching her breath billow out in a pale cloud. It was bitterly cold out here and she was working on day four of her three-day house-watching shift. She knew she was being punished for failing to kill the Keeper those weeks ago. Still, this was an underhanded and cowardly way of going about it. If a soldier failed you, you punished him once, sometimes in front of his peers if he deserved it, then you let it go and moved on. This endless sentence did nothing but foster resentment.

Briefly she thought of Ladon. The man was not necessarily a friend, but he was her closest companion among their small group. He was also subject to this drudgery for no reason more than because he'd happened to be there when punishments were being handed out. That he was late wasn't a surprise- the man had fallen in love with this planet's computer systems and spent all his spare time tinkering away with whatever technology he could get his hands on. Should they ever achieve their goal and gain control over the Stargate, the information he was gathering would be invaluable to the Genii people.

Assuming there still was a Genii people. Assuming the Wraith or any of their enemies hadn't wiped them out. Assuming the problem they had heard of the Stargate having was nothing more than stupidity or ignorance on the Earthers' part. Assuming they could ever seize control of the 'gate from Weir's network. Assuming they ever figured out where the damn thing even _was_.

She sighed again and rolled to the side, clambering to her feet. Her muscles were stiff with cold and the strain of forced stillness. Even so, she forced herself to move carefully through the stand of trees bordering the house's west side. The Satedan came out here once every two or three days to look around. He knew she was out here, and she knew she didn't have a hope in hell of beating a Satedan Specialist. Her only defense was to not be where he was.

Specialists were a rare and dangerous breed, all the more so because theirs wasn't a power that could be learned or that one could be born with. It was a wild power and had to be inherited. The Satedans were especially well-known for their undying line of masters; when they had closed their borders due to civil war and pulled away from their Stargate, no one had dared to intrude. Those were a people who meant business when it came to war.

From the way it had been described to Sora, a Specialists' power lent itself to a fight; they could use physical force and their power in equal balance in just about any scenario. Hand to hand, the power enhanced it user's strength and speed. With a gun, it improved their aim and put extra force behind the bullet. The power adapted itself to make its user the best they could be at whatever manner of combat they were engaged in, hence the term 'specialist'. It could also be actively used to cause distractions and keep their opponent continuously unsteady. A Specialist could be defeated, but not easily, and certainly not by one person alone.

That the Genii were watching the Keeper's house was a given. Still, there was no need to give them more information than absolutely necessary.

Sora traced her earlier steps back to the main road and flung herself into her car. She jammed the key into the ignition and cranked the heat all the way up. After a few moments to soak in the glorious warmth, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed Ladon's number for the umpteenth time.

This time, he surprised her and answered.

"I think I have an idea," he said before she could get past her shock. "About the Keeper, I mean."

"You answered your phone," Sora said, feeling stupid even as she said it. Of course he did, he could get- was going to get- into serious trouble for failing to do so.

"It's just like what Commander Kolya told us," he continued, unknowingly echoing her earlier thoughts. "Every wall has a weak point. We've been assuming that there's no way to get in because there's no walls in the way, just McKay's power. Well, we're wrong. We need to look at his power as a wall and work from there."

"There's a difference between stone and mortar and a man's power, Ladon," Sora reminded him. If he had spent the past twenty-three hours working on a way to get past the Keeper's defenses instead of watching the house, he'd better have something to show for it.

"Well, what do we know about Keepers?"

"There are none outside of Earth." Ladon grunted; not the answer he was looking for. "They're highly valued? I don't know, Ladon, and I don't feel like playing this game so why don't you tell me."

"They need to feel safe. If they feel threatened or insecure while in their safe zone, their power fades and it all comes undone. No more safe zone."

"Right," she agreed with a sigh. "But that's not going to happen. They don't let anyone they don't know in. Getting in without his permission is impossible, Ladon, and if we can't get in we can't make him feel insecure."

"It's a catch-22, I know. But I have an idea."

Sora rubbed at her ears, ignoring the tingling as she worked feeling back into the cold flesh, and listened to his plan. By the time he was done talking, she was smiling. By the time she hung up with him and checked in with her team's CO, she was happier than she had been since being stranded on this ignorant planet.

McKay's days as a Keeper were numbered.

---

Daniel allowed the car door to slam perhaps a little harder than was absolutely necessary and stared at the wall of power he could all but see in front of him. The main gate of Rodney McKay's house was something of an intimidating sight, made all the more so because this was his second visit and he now knew what to expect. He'd managed to convince himself that it wasn't as bad as he remembered it being, which probably meant it was worse.

Even more worrying was the reaction of his companion. Elizabeth drew herself up to her full height as if preparing to lead a cavalry into a charge; he could feel her gathering her courage and strength. Given her normal propensity for fearlessness, this was a concerning sensation.

"Did you know this Sheppard was a child of the Ancients?" Daniel asked her, trying to distract both of them. She spared him a quick smile.

"I knew he was different from anyone else I've ever seen. What that meant or how he was different, though, is as new to me as it is to you. And it would probably be best if you didn't call him that in front of Rodney."

"Yeah, I noticed that already," the archaeologist muttered. He took a deep breath, spared Elizabeth another glance, then walked forward. The gate opened in a sufficiently creepy haunted-house style, although it was too well cared for to squeak or squeal. Daniel moved forward those last few feet and felt the pressure, the invasive power that skimmed through his mind and across his skin and left him feeling thoroughly violated.

"I really hate that," he said when it was over. Elizabeth was looking a little less put-off than him.

"You get used to it," she told him. "And the more he trusts you, the less severe it is."

There was a brief pause as she realized what she'd said, and more importantly, to who. Daniel hesitated, then started up the long drive to the main house. He mourned the loss of their car but knew there was no point in even suggesting bringing it in. Had they thought about it, they probably could have arranged to be picked up by someone in a vehicle McKay wasn't freaky about. Too late now.

A long-legged figure loped towards them over the lawn. Elizabeth stopped and waited for their visitor to reach them, and once he did Daniel had to stare just a little. He knew who this was, having heard Jack complain about him frequently enough, but he'd never thought to meet the man.

"Ronon Dex, Daniel Jackson," Elizabeth introduced them. Ronon turned his head to the side to study Daniel out of the corner of his eye. It was somehow even more impressive than a full-on stare.

"Uh, hi," Daniel tried gamely. The big man continued to study him, then abruptly turned and strode away. "Doesn't say much, does he?" the archaeologist asked wryly.

"Does he really need to?" Elizabeth countered, and Daniel had to give her that one.

An agitated McKay was waiting for them when they reached the main house. Without so much as a hello, he ushered them into the living room where a lanky man was sprawled on the couch, one arm across his eyes.

"Hey! I said you could take a break, not take over my couch and hibernate all winter!" The Keeper barked.

The man on the couch started a little bit, then relaxed back into the cushions. "Jesus, Rodney, anyone ever tell you you'd make a good drill sergeant?" he asked in a slow, sleep-rough drawl. Then his hazel eyes flickered over to the newcomers and smirked. "Hey, Lizzy. Haven't seen you in a while. Kinda missed you."

Elizabeth went stiff at the sound of the hated nickname. Then she relaxed again and offered him a sugar-sweet smile.

"Hello, John. It has been a while. How's your shoulder? And no, I didn't know about your ability to activate Ancient devices, and if I did, I wouldn't manipulate you like this. And the Stargate address you keep writing actually does have seven symbols instead of six, so it's not just you losing your mind."

And she breezed past the couch and its gaping denizen, following Rodney into the kitchen.

"Tell ya what, I didn't miss that," the stranger muttered.

"Nobody does," Daniel sympathized. He met that dark gaze as it swung back to him and held out his hand. "Daniel Jackson."

"John Sheppard," came the response, the introduction and handshake more reflex than any attempt at social pleasantries. "I hear tell you're the guy to go to if I wanna know what the hell's going on with my psycho power."

Daniel grimaced at that. "Well, I don't know what Dr. McKay's been telling you, but I can't just take a look at you and tell you everything you need to know. We really have no idea of how the power works or how it reacts to certain outside influences."

"So, for all your complaints, it really is... magic." Sheppard studied him in challenge. Daniel shrugged helplessly.

"People are fond of putting labels on things we don't understand or are afraid of," he answered. "Giving something a name helps us cope with it, gives us the sense of control over it. To be politically correct, calling it just 'power' is about as accurate as we're ever going to get, because power is everything it is and nothing more."

"Huh." Sheppard tilted his head to the side and looked at Daniel closer than before, as if the archaeologist had only just proven himself worthy of paying attention to. "You know, that's the best explanation I've gotten so far for that."

"Well, as much as McKay might think I'm kind of... superfluous, to use his word, I do actually do some good." Daniel allowed himself a self-deprecating smile. Sometimes he had to wonder how far off-base McKay's less-than-flattering claims were. Still, with Sheppard suddenly feeling very hopeful, he knew better than to admit to it.

"Right. So you know why I have those- attacks?" He grimaced as he said the word, not liking the implication.

"Where you start writing the same Stargate address? Not really. As near as I can tell, your power and your activation ability sort of crossed paths, and got tangled up with one another."

"Yeah, that's what Rodney was saying."

"The first time was in the basement?" Daniel asked. When Sheppard grunted an agreement, he went on. "It's possible your activation ability somehow tapped into the Ancient devices McKay keeps down there, and your power- for lack of a better word- downloaded the device's information into your mind."

"We already went through everything in the basement. There's nothing interesting down there." Sheppard massaged his temple in a way Daniel easily recognized- he'd used too much of his power today, probably trying to keep up with Rodney's demands by activating Ancient devices. If the theories were right, turning on the things was using Sheppard's power in a secondhand way. The man was done in for the day.

They talked for a few minutes, Sheppard explaining the details of the attacks and the stuff downstairs, literally talking himself to sleep. He finally nodded off again and Daniel left him to sleep off the exhaustion and wandered into the kitchen. Teyla Emmagan, the Athosian woman he had met once, was pouring packets of cocoa into mugs of steaming water.

"He's exhausted," he told them. "If we try to get him to do something else for us today he'll crash and sleep for a week."

McKay's brows furrowed in consternation. "I told him to tell me if he was getting tired," he said irritably. He glanced at Elizabeth, who gave a small shrug.

"Well, the important thing is that everything's already been turned on. We can do the rest without him." Daniel glanced at the Keeper. "I assume you have the equipment...?"

McKay snorted in answer and headed out of the kitchen. Daniel paused for just a moment, accepting a mug of hot cocoa from Teyla, before following. Rodney would have his coffeemaker already bubbling away downstairs.

He stopped just outside the kitchen, cocoa nearly splashing his hand at the abrupt motion. He leaned back carefully, trying not to attract attention. Unaware of his audience, McKay was unfolding a blanket he'd retrieved from somewhere and tucking it around Sheppard. The man mumbled in his sleep and turned into the touch. McKay's rush of quiet affection made Daniel smile.

Then the Keeper glanced up and saw him. Clearly flustered, he snapped at Daniel, scowled at Sheppard, and sneered at the house to top it all off. He then stormed off. Daniel followed at a more sedate pace.

An empath learned very early on in life that some things were better left untouched.


	7. Attack

My sincerest apologies about the long break. My computer crashed, which is always fun, and right when I was sitting down to post the chapter after I got my computer back, I realized I didn't like a single thing I'd written. So I started over.

Also, incidentally, I wrote a small ficlet (actually, six-thousand-plus word monster, but who's counting?) that is John/Rodney porny goodness. It's AU and Rodney is a vampire. Yeah, a vampire. It's not really about that though. So if you want plot-less porn, go read it.

Disclaimer: me own nothing.

---

Chapter Seven- Attack- _The fall of a Keeper_

On day, when she had been fourteen years old, Elizabeth Weir had looked at her eight-year-old brother and had Known he was dying. The Knowing understandably scared her, for it had been a calm certainty in her mind. It was surprising, how insecure and uncertain people were about even the most basic of knowledge; Knowing was frighteningly right and she shied away from the knowledge. She had ignored it- after all, her power ended at the Knowing, what she did from there was all on her- and had almost managed to forget it. Almost. Within three months her brother was diagnosed with leukemia and within three more months she was attending his funeral.

Ever since then, she had become bitterly aware of things she hadn't before. She Knew enough to drive a wedge between her and other people, her pushing them away because it was easier and they allowing it because she frightened them on a primal level. And then one day, seven years after her brother's death, she wandered into a used bookstore in search of a textbook and Knew the old man behind the counter would be able to help her. After the initial shock, he had been able to figure out her power within minutes, and she soon became aware. Not long after that she was succeeding him as the leader of his network and owner of his small chain of stores, both of which flourished under her Knowing guidance.

Twenty-two years later, and her efforts and hard work was rewarded with this kitchen full of people, all completely different from one another, all friends or at least comrade in arms. She felt proud and warm, as if she were singlehandedly responsible for this whole thing and the people in front of her had done none of the real work. To her left, Daniel sent her a swift, amused look. She was being lazy and not guarding herself like she should and he was picking up her every emotion as if she were shouting it across the table.

They were clustered around the table for breakfast, which was the result of a combination effort between Daniel and Elizabeth herself. It was nothing fancy- coffee and toast and a Mount Kilimanjaro-sized heap of pancakes that was vanishing at an amazing rate. Rodney was sitting directly opposite Elizabeth and was a large part of the answer to the vanishing-pancake mystery. The other part was sitting to his left, hunched over his plate to protect it since it was obviously too much effort for the Keeper to reach the extra six inches to the big platter of pancakes in the middle of the table. Ronon had taken up this seat without hesitation and Elizabeth quickly figured out why- Rodney spent the entire meal jabbering about the discoveries they had made in the basement and, in classic Rodney way, gesturing widely. He whacked Ronon across the shoulder once and the Specialist promptly reached over to punch him back, hard enough to derail Rodney's train of words so he could whine about it. Ever since the gestures had been somewhat tamer and a good deal less dangerous.

To Rodney's right was Radek Zelenka, who had been called in at the same time as Daniel and Elizabeth. He was the only one at the table to keep up with Rodney word-wise and the two spent the entire time comparing and compiling ideas and experiences. They also, as was their way, took a break in the scientific chatter to trade off insults that grew increasingly more immature and quickly abandoned English in exchange for Russian and Czech and others that went by too quickly for even Daniel to recognize. Next to Radek was John, who watched the two with clear amusement. Occasionally, if the two sleep-deprived scientists seemed to be slowing down, he would offer up a sly comment and set them off again. He wasn't too bothered by the acerbic words slung his way whenever he managed to say something particularly offensive in its idiocy. He was relaxed and smiling a real smile and Elizabeth was grateful that something seemed to be getting through to the real John Sheppard, because the last thing he deserved was to burn out and destroy himself with his own power.

Teyla was next to John. She spent the meal watching the sideshow distraction with a more quiet form of amusement than John's; sometimes, when the arguments got a little too vicious, she would sit forward and pin a _look_ on them that would cause both men to quail and retreat like little boys caught sneaking cookies out of the jar. This gave them about ten seconds of silence before someone- normally John- made a leading comment and sent one of them- normally Rodney- off and running.

Daniel and Elizabeth both sat back, allowing the other four-plus-Radek to do their thing. It was interesting to watch how easily they had come together, as if they were always meant to be a team. Daniel had grudgingly taken a break from his translating efforts- they had found the Ancient version of a data storage device, which had contained several languages, including a rudimentary form of Latin. This Rosetta Stone, combined with Daniel's power as a Scribe, meant he was finally unlocking the exasperating puzzle that was the Ancient's language. He wouldn't be able to speak it, he told her ruefully, but he would be able to _read_ it, and all things considered they couldn't really ask for more.

"So do you three need me for anything more?" John asked, intruding into her thoughts. Breakfast was winding down, with even Ronon no longer making any more grabs for food, and it was obvious that the drifting away was beginning. Daniel's glances towards the door was replaced by inching. Rodney was a good deal less subtle; he stood, grabbed his coffee mug, and snorted.

"You? Oh please, you're only here to turn things on. You're a glorified techno-whore."

Elizabeth choked on her tea. Rodney had never been any good at social situations, but that easily took the cake as the most insensitive thing she'd ever heard him say. It was even more shocking when John laughed.

"Alrighty then, just remember- I offered. You change your mind, you get to go find yourself another techno-whore."

Rodney didn't answer; he was too busy chugging down the last of his coffee. He nudged Zelenka's shoulder and ducked out without so much as a thank you. Zelenka did thank them, for both the company and the food, and put his dishes in the sink before following. John stood in one graceful motion and smirked at Elizabeth's still very-visible shock. It was a smug, patronizing look, one that said _I learned how to handle Rodney McKay in four weeks and you've known him for twenty-odd years and still can't manage it_. A lazy challenge. She almost took offense. Instead she turned her own smile on him, putting the full impart of her eerie power behind it. He merely winked and loped out, not the slightest bit affected. Give him ten years and actual command experience in a real war, she thought mildly, and he might be a decent successor for O'Neill. Not that she was in the habit of wishing war upon people.

Then she had to smile, because she was sitting here plotting handing over her network to a wild power with brain space hijacked by an Ancient device. That was almost as odd as her plan to eventually suggest Teyla be her own successor. The Athosian had been a leader of her own people and already had the wisdom and grace to deal with all aspects involved. That she wasn't originally from Earth was her only flaw, and it was a minor one. Xenophobia was on the rise but those born with power already had a broader world view and aliens weren't really all that weird an idea.

Ronon was next to leave. He did so in his normal way, quiet and subtle and she wouldn't have noticed him gone until she actively looked for him had she not been sitting between him and the door. For a man who could clear a room with just one glower, he could be remarkably inconspicuous when he wanted to. Daniel finally realized that manners weren't going to get him anywhere and left with a hurried 'excuse me'. That meant it was just the two women, sitting across the table from each other and silently surveying the wreckage breakfast had left behind.

"Are they always like that?" Elizabeth asked, because the thought of cleaning up after the boys- and they were all boys, each and every one, because men knew better than to expect women to do all the housework, a standard which unfortunately meant there was a serious shortage of real men in this world- did not appeal to her. She briefly considered going and fetching one of the boys, then decided against it. The three scientists had too much to do already, and even with twelve solid hours of sleep John still looked tired, and Ronon... well, Ronon didn't really have an excuse, except now that she'd let him out of her sight she would never find him again until there were no more chores to be done.

"John and Rodney?" Teyla answered, also casting a quick, despairing glance over the tale before meeting Elizabeth's gaze once more. "They are. At first I thought they honestly did not care for each other, but it appears to be the opposite. The harsher their words, the more they seem to be enjoying themselves."

"Well, good. I just wanted to make sure they're not going to end up killing each other." Elizabeth stood with a tired sigh. Might as well get started on clean up.

John stuck his head back in five minutes later, just as Elizabeth was debating if Rodney really needed all these dishes or if she could just throw them out. The man started to say something, then snapped his mouth shut and ducked into the room, slouching next to the sink and grabbing the sponge away from Elizabeth. Teyla, who was loading the dishwasher, smiled satisfactorily to herself.

"So the Geek Squad downstairs is going nuts over something," he said conversationally, as Elizabeth gave him a grateful nod and retreated back to the table.

"Why?" she asked, sipping at her tea. The other two had fallen into a comfortable rhythm, making her think this wasn't the first time they'd gotten stuck on clean up duty. Given their housemates, this was not a surprise.

"Jackson got the Ancient language figured out. He's translating everything now."

"And you're up here because...?" Elizabeth began. He shrugged.

"Apparently I'm distracting." He snorted. "Even though I was standing quietly out of the way."

Somehow Elizabeth doubted that standing quietly had been all he was doing, especially since he was looking paler and more drawn than he had at breakfast. He'd been using his power again, probably to turn on the devices downstairs. Or off. Or both. Which shouldn't really be a big bother to him, not by itself, but he hadn't fully recovered from the previous day yet. They really were going to have to teach him moderation, she thought wryly. He was going kill himself if he kept up this pace.

Elizabeth wasn't the only one to notice. Teyla had half-turned towards her friend, eyes dark with concern and lips pressed into a thin line. One hand strayed down to her pocket and slowly pulled her red laundry marker out. She wouldn't be able to do much with it, but that didn't really matter. It was more a comfort thing. John noticed the movement and leaned away from her.

"Don't you dare," he ordered. "I only just got it all off from last time."

"Do they want us down there?" Elizabeth asked.

"I got something of a 'don't call us, we'll call you' kind of feel," John answered wryly. He paused and reached up to touch a small lump growing on the back of his neck. "That Zelenka's got quite an arm."

Elizabeth sighed. She didn't really want to know.

---

It was close to noon when John found himself back in the kitchen. This time he settled onto a tall stool in front of the center island. Elizabeth sat next to him as Daniel Jackson and Radek Zelenka shuffled papers and fumbled with laptops and pens. John patiently waited for them, sitting back to watch all three. The intruders. They didn't fit into the easy rhythm of the house, probably never would. There was only room for four in this bizarre little family.

"Is there a reason you called us down here, or is this just your way of telling us you need a couple of secretaries down there to keep you guys organized?" John asked after almost three minutes. The two scientists both looked up at him, taken aback. John waved off the questioning looks with an apologetic grin. Obviously the snark war was limited to Rodney alone.

"Uh, well," Jackson began. He glanced at John one more time before trying again. "We found what we believe to be some sort of data storage device, sort of like a flash drive." He placed a small gadget on the table between them. It looked like nothing special; a small black box with what looked like a flat piece of glass tucked into an open slot. "After John was kind enough to activate the reading device, we figured out what's on it."

"Among other things," Zelenka picked up, sliding a notebook forward. Its lined pages were covered with Ancient scribbles. Off to one side was something like a chart. John pulled the notebook closer to study it- sixty-odd symbols, separated into two columns. He traced a finger carefully over the Ancient words, then blinked and looked again. Each and every word had six letters, no more or less. Not words.

"Stargate addresses?" he asked, glancing up. The two scientists beamed at him excitedly. He felt his own excitement rise accordingly and sat forward, trying not to look too eager. "Any with seven symbols?"

"No," Jackson said, brutal and to the point, although he looked apologetic. "Sorry. But a large chunk of the data is corrupt, most likely due to corrosion caused by... well, age. McKay's trying to fix it, but he's not having much luck. The address you're- seeing- could be on the corrupted parts."

"Any way of translating these into the actual coordinate points?" Elizabeth put in, gently pulling the notebook towards her. John let her take it and dropped back heavily into his chair. He should have known there would be no easy answer to this mess.

"Yes and no," came the unhelpful response. "It should be easy enough, especially since McKay's been kind enough to supply a life-sized schematic of the Stargate. However, I'm looking at these."

Jackson took the notebook back and flipped a few pages over- jeez, there were a lot of addresses there- pausing to circle a few series and scribble something in the margin. He plopped the well-used notebook between them once more.

John leaned over to study it. After a moment he once again dropped back. "Something there I'm not seeing?"

"There are two groupings," Zelenka said. "Two-" he glanced at Jackson in frustration. "Two different groupings of coordinates."

John tilted his head in consideration of that. Jackson, seeing their confusion, tried to explain it a little better.

"The Stargate has a certain number of coordinate points on it, and each 'gate address has six of these symbols- always six, it never repeats a symbol. Because there's thirty-nine symbols to choose from, in sequences of six in any order, there's literally thousands of potential 'gates we could dial. But these," he gestured towards the addresses he had circled, "use none of the same symbols as any previous addresses."

John blinked and leaned closer once more, studying the symbols closely, flipping the page back and forth to compare them to the other addresses. Why, he couldn't say, since it was doubtful he would see something in thirty seconds that those three hadn't already figured out during their hours in the basement.

"Is it a different letter still representing the same coordinate point, or is it a completely different set of coordinates?" Elizabeth asked pointedly. By the time she had finished the first half of the sentence, both scientists were shaking their head.

"The second set has only thirty-two symbols," Zelenka explained.

"Also, Teyla has told us several times that the symbols on our 'gate are different from the ones on Athos'," Jackson added.

"So... a different set of coordinates? Why?" John glanced between the other two men.

"Different coordinates for a different Stargate network, different network for a different galaxy."

John blinked at Jackson's words. He shared a quick look with Elizabeth, silently asking permission to start cracking Star Wars jokes. She arched an eyebrow marginally and gave a small shake of her head.

"No, no, look," the archaeologist had obviously figure out the meaning between that exchange. "Jack asks everyone who comes through the 'gate what address they dialed to reach Earth. Most of them gave us this." He sketched out a quick six-symbol address. "But Teyla and Ronon and a handful of others gave us this." Here he drew a seven-symbol address, using coordinate points John had never seen before.

"Why the extra coordinate?" Elizabeth was leaning forward now too.

"To secure the connection, maybe? Possibly because Earth is in a different galaxy and the eighth coordinate lock is necessary to bridge the distance."

"Then the address I've been seeing is... in another galaxy?" John ducked his chin against his chest and folded his arms. He was not going to laugh. No matter how absurd this seemed, he was not going to laugh.

"It might very well be the only access point we have to return to that galaxy," Jackson replied. He paused for a moment. "Provided, of course, we get the Stargate to work."

"What is it?" Elizabeth demanded suddenly. All three men stared blankly at her. "There's something at those coordinates, something important. The device _downloaded_ this information into John's brain because it couldn't let that address be lost. So what's there?"

"We don't know exactly," Zelenka admitted slowly. "Educated guess? The weapon the Ancients used to defend Earth."

"How did you know it- you know what, never mind." John turned away from Elizabeth to regard the Czech. "Weapon, huh? Might be worth hunting down."

"You keep saying something's missing. We need the completed address first," Jackson pointed out.

"No, actually, we need the Stargate working first," John countered. Jackson nodded.

"Fair enough. Problem is, I can't do that from here. I need access to the 'gate itself." He stood up and glanced at Elizabeth. "To be honest I don't really need to be here anymore. McKay and Radek can handle everything from here. I need to get back to Colorado."

Elizabeth rose with him. She paused, her eyes going momentarily unfocused, then she smiled at him. "Why don't you take Radek with you? He could be helpful."

Jackson paused and glanced at her in confusion. She merely gazed at him, her expression calmly informing both of them that this really wasn't a suggestion. After a moment the archaeologist shrugged and looked at Zelenka. The two excused themselves and made tracks for the basement, leaving John with a suddenly deflated Elizabeth.

"Something we should know about?" John asked carefully.

"Maybe. I don't know." She pressed her lips into a thin line and shifted to study him closely. "We don't belong here, John. Not like you four."

John shifted uneasily, hearing his own thoughts from earlier echoed. "We're not trying to-"

"I know," she cut in smoothly. "But sometimes... You four balance each other out perfectly, and your power refuses to let anyone else in." She gave him one more long, searching look. "This is your burden now, John. Take care of them."

"Take care- hey! Don't I get any say in this?"

"Not really," Elizabeth answered cheerfully. "Not in this. No one does." And with a sympathetic smile, she walked out. John leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the table. After a moment he leaned forward to grab the abandoned notebook and flipped to a new page. With a tired sigh, he drew out the mystery address, leaving a blank space between each symbol.

Thirty-nine symbols- thirty-three if Jackson was right about the no repeats- in any one of seven places, between the other symbols or on either end. Two hundred and thirty-one possibilities. He rubbed at his forehead with the pad of his thumb and stared at the page.

This was going to drive him completely mad.

---

One of the good things about being small and blond and female, Sora had long ago discovered, was that men tended to greatly underestimate her. Especially the big kind.

The pawn shop was almost completely empty, with only the employee and a man who was approximately the size of a small bus. She spared the latter a disdainful glance before heading over to the front counter. As she walked, she pulled out a disc, carefully twisting it so it reflected a beam of sunlight straight into the gorilla-man's eyes.

The employee behind the counter recognized her immediately. Of course he would- the Genii were some of his best customers. Plus he knew she could kill him before he could even blink.

"I'm going to need all this," she said simply, holding out the disc. "By tonight."

He glanced at the disc, over at his muscle man, then took the disc and carefully slipped it into his ten-year-plus-old computer. Sora shifted impatiently and waited for him to boot up the proper programs. Earth was ridiculously advanced, especially when compared to the world she had been born and raised on, but a quick glance at the past century showed that they were only just now starting to get into the swing of things. They didn't even need the Wraith to bring death and destruction upon them; before too much longer, they would most likely be destroying themselves. Sora didn't care. She planned on being back home long before then.

The man was staring at the screen, face gone pale. Her list was short and simple- she had ten men and a decent supply of weapons for them. All she really needed was a way in.

"That's..." he began. Swallowed once, carefully, eying her closely. "That's quite a lot of C-4."

"Yes, it is." She didn't offer an explanation. She didn't even bat an eye.

"And you want it by tonight?"

"Yes, I do."

He looked up at her once more. She merely stared down at him, one hand casually straying to her belt, where she might have god-only-knows what sort of weapons. He got the point.

"Consider it done."

---

Somewhere around nine in the evening, three hours after the three intruders finally left, John found Rodney sitting on the front porch drinking.

Actually, Ronon found him there, and went to fetch- read: drag- John out to talk to him. About what, exactly, was never made clear, for the Satedan deposited him beside Rodney and left without a word. John stayed where he was, no doubt in his mind that Ronon would forcibly retrieve him again if he tried to leave, and Rodney finished off another bottle of some Canadian brew and remained happily unaware of the outside world.

This awkward silence- awkward from John's perspective at least, probably not from Rodney's since he appeared oblivious to John's presence- kept up for a painful fifteen minutes. Rodney finally dealt with the awkwardness in his own classic blunt way. He grabbed himself another bottle of beer, then handed one over to John, who took it wordlessly. The following five minutes were a good deal less tense and weird, as John tried not to choke on the strong beer and still said nothing.

Finally he decided he needed to start somewhere, especially since the row of empty bottles on Rodney's other side was a pretty good indication that the man was far from sober.

"So."

Okay, so maybe there was a reason no one had ever accused John of being a conversationalist. Rodney leveled that blue gaze on him and John tried not to frown. Those sharp, keen eyes were muddled and hazy, foggy with the alcohol, and John didn't like it. It spurred him on.

"Is there any reason you're out here getting plastered?" he asked casually. Rodney made an attempt at his contemptuous snort.

"Think I'm past the 'getting' part," he mumbled, and wasn't it just classic Rodney that he didn't even slur once? Of all the things people lost while drunk, coherent speech would naturally be the last to abandon Rodney.

"I noticed," John said simply, glancing wryly at the bottles. Rodney started to huff but his breath caught and dragged out of him in a long sigh instead.

"You know, you're kinda pretty."

John inhaled sharply and nearly choked himself on a mouthful of booze. Rodney patiently waited out the following coughing fit, eyes locked on the ground in front of him as he rolled the glass bottle between his hands.

Naturally the first thing Rodney _would_ lose while drunk was what little social tact he normally had.

"Um. Thanks?" John tried, once he felt it was safe to breathe again. Rodney mumbled something under his breath and sighed again. Then he leaned over, dropping his full weight on John's shoulder. John, not expecting it, nearly went over sideways into the bushes lining the porch.

"Yours ears are weird though," Rodney informed him, ignoring John as he flailed for a grip on something and threw his beer halfway across the yard in the process. Before he could fully regain his balance, he felt something- good god was that a _tongue_?!- tracing the shell of his ear. He shuddered and made the mistake of closing his eyes. Rodney, who just had to be an amorous drunk because it would be the last thing anyone expected of him, took advantage of his chance and plastered himself around John's waist. John fell backward, his back hitting the ground with an audible 'oof', and Rodney tightened his grip with a contented murmur.

"Okay," John gasped out, because damn if Rodney wasn't surprisingly strong. "I'm guessing you don't really wanna talk about it."

"You smell good," the Keeper muttered, nuzzling at John's throat.

"Now that's just- Rodney!" He yelped the name when the other man bit him, teeth catching the fragile skin below his ear. "All right, play time's over. Get off."

"Trying to," came the response that John felt more than heard. After a moment he realized what that meant and rolled his eyes.

"Bad, Rodney, that was just plain bad. Let go of me."

"Nope." And Rodney cradled his cheek in one palm and turned his face in and kissed him.

For about two thirds of a second, John considered forcibly removing his new cling-on. Then he mentally rolled his eyes and relaxed into the kiss. Rodney was surprisingly skilled, considering both his recent alcohol consumption and his acerbic personality which, or so John assumed, tended to scare off potential partners.

When John pulled away to breathe, Rodney went back to his ear, and god that was just far too distracting. He almost didn't notice the hand sliding under his shirt. "Okay, Rodney, seriously now. You're going to bed, alone."

"Don't wanna."

"Too bad," John grunted, then bucked his hips and flipped them both over. Rodney whined in protest as John quickly pulled away.

It took a good bit of work, but he finally got Rodney to his feet and staggering inside, heading towards the basement. Halfway down the stairs, the Keeper suddenly decided to spill.

"You know what today is?" he asked. John shook his head, surreptitiously tucking in his shirt for the sixth time. Rodney had quick, clever hands and shockingly cold fingers.

"No. Should I?"

"Today is the anniversary of the day I failed."

They hit the bottom of the stairs and John started maneuvering them towards Rodney's little back room. Possibly he should've taken him up to his actual room, but this was easier.

"When have you ever failed?" he asked breathlessly. Then, "Oh, the Stargate?"

"Yes." Rodney sighed and leaned even more heavily into John, who in turn immediately ran his other shoulder into the wall. "I failed. I wasn't smart enough."

"Yes, you are, you just didn't have all the pieces." John had no idea what he was saying other than that it felt like the right thing to say. He practically tossed Rodney onto the bed and ran a critical eye over him. No shoes, check. Long-sleeved shirt, okay. Jeans? He looked around for some sort of pajamas and had started to head for the dresser when a hand caught his shirt.

"Don't leave," Rodney said simply. John hesitated, then shrugged and reached out to grab a nearby chair and drag it over. He propped his feet up on the bed and Rodney snorted and shoved them off. He wriggled his way beneath the blankets, not even pretending to use them properly, and promptly fell asleep. He was going to regret tonight by the next morning, but at least he was no longer molesting innocent Sheppards.

John brushed a thumb over his lips and frowned. And what the hell was he supposed to make of that, precisely?

Rodney snuffled loudly into his pillow and John glanced over at him. He sighed, folded his arms over his chest, and settled down low into the chair. After a moment he put his feet back up, careful to put them nowhere near Rodney's face. He might as well stay here for a few hours.

He didn't know exactly when he decided the chair was too uncomfortable and moved over to the bed. He was half-asleep by that point anyway, and Rodney was warm and thoughtfully wrapped himself around John within seconds. There was no groping, just cuddling. Had John been fully awake he probably would have fought his way free.

Instead, he slept.

---

Sora plugged in the last wire and carefully placed the C-4 block as close to the gate support as she could get it. It wasn't close; the Keeper's power granted the gate a healthy three feet of breathing room. The buffer would deplete the explosion's sheer destructive power and probably only barely warp the metal fence beyond. Not that it mattered what happened here up front, the important thing was to draw attention away from other areas.

If you can't get through the front door, go through the back. If there is no back door, make one.

She rocked back onto her heels and pulled out a disposable cell phone. This had been a late addition to the plan but it was an important one. McKay was a clever bastard; they needed every advantage they could get.

The phone rang twice, three times. Then a rough voice answered.

"Is Doctor McKay available?" she asked, trying for cheerful. She glanced briefly at her watch- a little after two am. Hopefully he was asleep or close to it, which would slow his reflexes and cause him to react without thinking.

"No," came the short reply. Sora apologized and said something about calling again later and hung up before he could think to ask who she was and how she had that number. She rose to her feet and ran back to the tree line, nodding to her men- her men, she was leading this little op- and held up a hand, fingers spread. Then she tucked her thumb against her palm. Four. Three. Ladon was muttering over her radio about the cold. She ignored him. Two.

One.

---

The first explosion jolted Rodney out of bed as though he'd been jabbed with a cattle prod. He tripped over the blankets, fell to his knees, and scrambled back upright. In the process he hit something warm and yielding which protested loudly; he ignored it and took off at a run. Sleep and alcohol had fogged his brain and all he could think was that there was something out there, attacking him, and he needed to be out there to stop it

The cold winter air was a slap in the face and Rodney stopped dead on the front porch. He blinked blearily at the sight in front of him, the black night splintered by red fire. As he watched, the second explosion hit off to his left, causing him to flinch away. He stared around blankly, utterly uncomprehending.

Around him, his power surged, waking from its slumber like a hibernating bear. It poured forward, filling in the cracks, shoring up weakened areas. Had Rodney been fully awake he would have instantly recognized the danger and moved to counteract it. As it was, he was only aware of how bad things actually were only at the third explosion, which followed the back edge of the fence and breached the now-fragile wall of power.

Rodney felt the breach, felt his power flicker like a dying light. He felt the gaping hole were previously there had been a solid wall. He gasped breathlessly at the sensation and spun on his heel, charging blindly through the house and out the back door to see-

The yard was half-swallowed by orange flames. The fence had been blown inwards. Through it came a half-dozen men carrying guns. Rodney stared, eyes wide.

"No," he said, softly, helplessly, denial his only available option. "No." _Please god, no_.

His power was unraveling, slipping through his fingers too quickly for him to stop it. Hysterically, he pictured someone with a severed jugular trying to stop the bleeding- that was fairly close to what this felt like. He scrambled to keep something intact and failed.

The pain slammed into him then, the soul-deep exhaustion of stretching himself too thin, of putting too much of his strength into his power. He dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around his chest and doubling over, breath coming in gasps.

One of the intruders walked up to him. It was the Genii woman who had attacked him the day he'd met Sheppard. She regarded him coldly for a moment; then she lifted her gun.

There was a rush of air and a sound similar to a cracking whip. The woman flew backwards, as if she had just been swatted by a giant cat, and landed some twenty feet away. Rodney watch her, feeling detached from the goings-on around him. He barely even blinked when Sheppard was suddenly kneeling in front of him, grabbing his shoulders and yelling at him. He felt- and probably looked- broken beyond repair.

It was gone. All gone. Everything he had worked so hard to get, destroyed within minutes. He closed his eyes and collapsed into himself, ignoring Sheppard's support, and watched the world go dark.

---

John swore to himself as Rodney suddenly dropped against him. He pushed the Keeper onto his side and spun around, watching the woman carefully. His power had snapped out at her, a darkly furious part of him wanting her dead, and it had taken all of his hard-won restraint to check his power so it wouldn't kill both her and Rodney. She'd taken a harder hit than Ronon had, and John didn't know if she was alive or not.

"How the hell did she even get in here?" he muttered to himself, reaching out to grab the gun she had dropped.

A blast of red light flew overhead and John threw himself to the ground, rolling over to bring the gun up and aim at- Ronon. The Specialist jogged over to him, blaster in one hand and nasty-looking sword in the other. The sword's blade was stained dark. John didn't let himself think about that.

"McKay?" Ronon asked, crouching next to him.

"He's not hurt," John answered. "Don't know what's wrong with him."

Ronon met his gaze briefly, then glanced around at the fires and the warped gate. "Think I got an idea," he said simply. He was waiting for an order, John realized abruptly. Somehow, in the past few weeks, he really had taken over as de facto leader of their little group. It was both oddly touching and incredibly alarming.

Well, if they were going to treat him like a leader, he was responsible enough to act like one. "Teyla?" John asked harshly. The big man merely shrugged and hefted his blaster.

"They're Genii," he said, offering an explanation and quietly seeking permission. John swore to himself and peered into the fiery night. Aside from the as-yet unmoving woman, he'd seen none of their attackers. Ronon, obviously, had had at least a few encounters.

"Any idea how many of them there are?"

"No," Ronon grunted. He was leaning forward now, all coiled muscle and preparation, looking ready to lunge. He put John in mind of a trained attack dog, straining at the leash and waiting impatiently for his chance. John metaphorically tightened his grip and dug his heels in.

"All right. Plan is, find Teyla and get the hell out of here."

Predictably enough, Ronon did not approve of this plan. John didn't really care. There was an unknown number of armed men out there, currently held at bay only by the ferocity of the fires and maybe their stumbling across comrades of theirs Ronon had already disposed of. Teyla was missing in action, although to be honest, she could fend for herself better than John. Rodney, who would never be considered a fighter, especially not compared to the company he kept, was unconscious for reasons undetermined. The Satedan started to protest and John spoke right over him.

"Look, we don't know how many are out there, and we have to take care of Rodney. We need to get out, now."

Ronon glared at him, then glanced at the Genii woman. Backing off from a fight went against his nature, but disobeying such a clear, direct order went against his training. John waited until he had a single nod of acquiescence and grabbed Rodney's arm. The Keeper- except he wasn't really a Keeper anymore, was he?- was limp and heavy and panting hard. John glanced around, taking in the ruins that had once been the safest place he'd ever known. Cold fury in every movement, he took the gun and aimed at the Genii bitch.

"John."

Teyla, coming out of the darkness to John's left. She didn't have to say anything else. He glanced over, met Teyla's quiet gaze. She gave no indication of what she was thinking, just watched him without censure. His finger twitched on the trigger but didn't pull. After a long moment, he let the gun drop and let the breath he'd been holding rush out.

Then Teyla was there, supporting Rodney's other side, and Ronon was covering them as they carried the scientist back into the house and down to the garage. John thought semi-hysterically of earlier that night, when he'd been carting Rodney around for a different reason.

"Where are we going?" Teyla finally asked, watching as the garage door opened. John didn't know the answer before she started the question but figured it out before she finished it.

"Colorado eventually. For now, some cheap motel. Someplace for Lorne or whoever to find us."

"And Rodney?" she added quietly. John risked a glance back, to the Athosian sitting behind the driver's seat, to the scientist with his head in her lap. He was shivering and still panting and occasionally mumbling.

"Any idea what's wrong with him?" No answer. "Well, he's not injured or anything, so I suggest we get him to someone who can figure out his problem and deal with it."

Teyla frowned, no doubt put off by his coldness. Ronon merely shrugged. Still following John's lead. The one who was most likely to object was in no shape to be doing so.

John rested his forehead against the window and watched the others in the reflection. Ronon had driving skills that would be greatly admired by kamikaze pilots. Teyla spent the trip whispering soothingly to Rodney and grabbing at the door handle. John closed his eyes and briefly skated a fingertip over the small bruise decorating the soft skin under his ear. He thought back to the day he'd walked into Elizabeth's book store for the first time. How he'd almost turned and run even before setting foot in the store. Since then, he had encountered magic, war, and the most infuriating man ever. For the first time, he wondered if it had really been worth it.

Then he steeled himself and opened his eyes, turning to stare out at the dark road ahead. Worth it or not, this was his life. As Elizabeth had said earlier, he couldn't walk out on these people. Not now, not when they needed him most.

Ronon met his gaze, briefly, approval lighting up his dark eyes. Then both went back to watching the road and listening to Teyla, listening for the slightest hint that something was wrong- more wrong- with Rodney. And John allowed himself a tiny, sad smile.

Yeah. It was worth it.


	8. Hunting

We're moving on pretty quick, kiddos. Soon we'll be leaving Earth entirely.

Also, I've only seen the first two seasons of SG-1, so my experience with Cameron Mitchell can be best summed up in one word: fics. Yes, I'm basing his character off fics. And the episode Pegasus Project, which I watched god only knows when. I just kinda vaguely remember the big-ass Stargate eating the Ori ship and Mitchell threatening Rodney with a lemon. I'm assuming that that is classic McKay-induced irritation and not typical behavior for him.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

---

Chapter Eight- Hunting- _Sora refuses to give up and Rodney gets stuck in a very scary place_

When the Genii squad had first gone off-world, it had been for a simple reconnaissance mission. Head over to a trading partner, see if they were withholding any interesting tidbits, come back and report. The Commander would decide what to do from there. As such, the team itself was comprised only of twenty men. Four had fallen to the Wraith when they had attacked the world the squad had been on. Three more had managed to slip away after being welcomed to this new world and before they had their bearings back. Two had died in the four years since.

Of the eleven left, Pranos was technically the leader, although that was in name only, Ladon Radim was their scientist and the true brains behind the operations, and lovely little Sora was what the Earthlings called a 'loose cannon'. Right now she was being especially loose.

"For the last time, Sora, report," Ladon ordered through gritted teeth. He glanced at the fire still raging over to his left. They were making no effort to corral the flames, instead just ransacking what was left of the house. McKay's network would be here for cleanup within the hour; there was no time for games.

For the second time in her life, Sora had gone toe-to-toe with the wild power John Sheppard. For the second time, she had lost. Adding to the general level of insult, Sheppard didn't even seem to be aware that there had been a fight either time. Now Sora was gone, and given her hot temper, Ladon had no doubt about where she was. Unfortunately, finding her meant finding Sheppard first.

If he had been asked exactly what had gone wrong that night, his answer would have been simple: they had underestimated their opponents. The Keeper had held on to his defensive walls for a minute or two longer than they had expected. The Satedan caught on and got moving faster than they had hoped. The wild power was slightly more dangerous than they had believed. The four of them actually worked together. Little things that had added up to be big things. And now Sora had vanished.

Ladon swore to himself as he reached the area where she'd been last seen. Taking a blow from a wild power was rather like taking a blow from a grizzly bear- even if you survived, you went down fast and stayed there for a while. That Sora had already gotten her feet back under her and was on the move was impressive.

He bent down and picked up her intact radio. The girl was going to be the death of all of them, he just knew it.

"Sir," a man panted out as he ran up. Ladon regarded him carelessly. Despite there being only a handful of his fellow Genii on the planet, they had managed to attract a fair-sized group of people, mostly fugitives and washed-out military and even a handful of mercenary and organized crime rejects. It was doubtful anyone outside of Weir's network knew exactly how small their true numbers were, and Weir's understanding was based only on her controlling the damn Stargate. The man approaching Ladon now was one of his few fellow Genii.

"What's wrong now?" he asked wryly.

"We were told there would be Ancestral technology in the basement," the man began.

"And there was, but there's nothing now," Ladon finished. "Almost like someone knew we were coming."

Weir had been here. She'd left, but she'd been here. She had Known and prepared accordingly. Ladon sighed and rubbed at his temple. There was nothing to be done now but get gone before the military half of Weir's network put in an appearance and expressed their disapproval with Genii tactics. As for Sora- easier perhaps to find Sheppard, which they didn't have the time to do nor the resources to take him on if they did find him. They had no choice but to let her go for now.

"Grab what you can, trash the rest. Leave nothing for them to find." He blinked as a sudden breeze stung his eyes with smoke.

"And Sora?"

"If she contacts us, we track her down and bring her back fast as we can. If she doesn't, we assume the worst. Pray to the Ancestors she isn't incompetent enough to get captured." Except she wasn't thinking like a trained soldier right now, she was thinking like a pissed, temperamental woman. She was both; unfortunately, the latter tended to come across stronger. The Commander had sent her on the recon mission specifically to see how out-of-control she would get. It had been a simple mission, nothing that could be screwed up too badly no matter what happened. Except for what _had _happened, the one thing no one could predict, the one thing no one ever planned for: the Wraith.

Ladon grunted and rubbed at his eyes, feeling the bitter sting from the smoke. Off in the distance a pair of headlights momentarily lit up a bend in the road before disappearing again. The road continued on in easy view from where he was. The driver had turned off the headlights.

"Time to go," he said over the radio, palming Sora's as he did so. He spared a glance off to his right as he walked away, gaze resting briefly on the bodies lined up there. Three had fallen tonight, all three to that damn Satedan bastard. None had been true Genii. Ladon wasn't concerned about possible identification, since they were little more than hired guns and had little or no connection to his group.

Sora gone. Three men dead. Their advantage blown. Pranos was going to be pissed.

---

Pain. He was very much aware of the pain.

Rodney McKay was no fan of pain, had spent his entire adult life in the pursuit of a pain-free lifestyle. He was a selfish coward and proud of it. Everything he had done in his life had been for one of two reasons: proving himself to be the smartest man alive, or to avoid pain. In that first objective he was largely successful. In the second he'd failed continuously- because he was human and therefore not invincible- although never as bad as this.

He was aware of things going on around him. He heard Teyla's soothing voice and the other two talking up front in a broken rhythm. He felt the bitter cold air of a winter-chilled car not yet warmed by the ventilation system. He smelled smoke and char. Mostly he felt his own power. No longer a protective buffer between him and the world, it lay huddled in the corner, as abused and hurt and confused as he was. He was no longer a Keeper. He had nothing now.

He tried to focus, tried to drag himself out of the well of darkness and pain. It was an odd sensation to be skimming just below true consciousness and he didn't much like it. It reminded him too much of stories he'd heard about coma patients and how they might actually be aware of what was going on around them. God, if he was in some sort of power-induced coma, that would be...

Well. That would be just his luck.

The darkness wasn't backing off. If anything, it was closing in. He tried to move and got no response; he tried to make some noise and failed again. His head felt like some idiot jock had used it for batting practice and his skin was apparently trying to crawl off his body. He was shivering, he realized distantly, shivering and panting and whispering random words in the half-dozen languages he'd picked up over the years. The words were nonsense and generally tended to translate into a slightly verbose version of 'ow'.

This was not normal. He'd seen power burnout before and it was nothing like this. What the hell did those Genii fuckers do to him?

Teyla's hands were strong and gentle. Her voice was smooth as honey and she was speaking in a lyrical language he'd never heard before, possibly her native tongue. Her hair was brushing against his face, one particular strand longer than the rest curling as it rested on his cheekbone. Prior to that point her tendency to want to _touch_ had put him on edge but now he was desperately grateful for it. She was his only link to the real world, to the world outside of the pain.

Rodney mentally sighed and closed his eyes, forcing himself to settle down. He was going to have to trust the other three, much as it went against his nature. Trust them to take care of him, keep him safe.

Trust them to make those Genii bastards pay.

---

"Wow."

Major Lorne glanced over, studying the man beside him. It wasn't a good 'wow', an impressed look-at-this-isn't-this-amazing 'wow'. This was more the sort of 'wow' he'd heard a lot from people- civilians especially- when faced with indescribable disaster. The sort of 'wow' one would expect to have heard on the streets of New Orleans after Katrina, or perhaps at Ground Zero in NYC before cleanup crews had cleared out the remains of the fallen towers.

A Keeper did not go down easily or quickly, and Rodney McKay had been no exception.

"Genii?" The major's companion asked, carefully twisting himself around so his breath didn't fog up the car window. Lorne tried not to grimace as he stopped just outside the gate. The twisted, heat-warped gate that looked like a horror movie reject. The house beyond was almost completely gone.

"Most likely," he answered grimly. "They're the only ones we know who have not only the motive to arrange something like this, but also the means. They're the only ones I can think of who can bring a Keeper down, sir." The only ones who would want to.

Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell was in a position very similar to that of General O'Neill- he was aware, but had no power of his own, and so had to rely upon subordinates who did. Unlike the general, however, Mitchell found himself constantly in the field with his life in the hands of those with powers he couldn't comprehend. He therefore had a vested interest in learning as much as he could about those powers as quickly as possible.

Understandably, most people never encountered McKay; he wasn't exactly a poster child for network friendliness. Unless Lorne was greatly mistaken, Mitchell had never even met the man, had probably been only vaguely aware of his existence. That was without doubt the best way to work with McKay- with a buffer of several people and no direct interaction.

A man in dark fatigues jogged up to their car. He balked for a moment, not sure which side to circle around to. Mitchell solved the problem by rolling his window down and leaning out slightly.

"Problem, Sergeant?" he asked as the man walked up.

"No, sir," the sergeant answered instantly. "It's clear. We've got three bodies, look like they went a round with Freddie Kruger, but nothing alive."

"The bodies aren't..." Lorne began carefully, not sure how to ask the question. The sergeant shook his head.

"No, sir. They're burnt but not bad enough to be unidentifiable. They're not ours." He stepped away from the car door, clearly indicating that it was past time they got out.

The two senior officers exchanged a tired glance and climbed out of the warm car. Lorne pulled his coat tighter around himself and ignored the sergeant's artistically hidden smirk. He really hated arrogant Marines and their trash-talking ways. Being Air Force didn't make him weak. It just meant he'd prefer to learn to fly rather than eight ways to break someone's neck.

"Any idea where they might be going?" Mitchell asked. Lorne felt momentarily vindicated to see the colonel shivering as well, then shoved that thought away. Mitchell was a fellow flyboy and besides, he came from the deep South if his trace accent was anything to go by.

"Judging by the group dynamics, Sheppard's acting as leader right now," he said stiffly, staring down at the small row of bodies as they approached. "I honestly have no idea what he might be up to. I don't know him that well."

"Thought you said you dropped by a lot."

"Yes, sir, I did, but Sheppard..." Lorne shrugged helplessly. "Puts up a front. Never really got to know the man behind it."

"Not a surprise," Mitchell sighed, glaring at the sky as a particularly strong gust of wind tore at them. He walked over to the bodies and knelt down beside one, studying the gaping hole where the man's throat used to be. Lorne didn't need to get close; he recognized Ronon Dex's handiwork when he saw it.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket for the third time in five minutes and glanced at it. No missed calls. With a tired sigh, he pressed redial and half-listened to the endless ringing. Only Teyla's cell phone was still working, and she wasn't answering. Clearly they'd had more important things to worry about. He didn't bother leaving a voicemail. As he hung up, Mitchell glanced over questioningly, and Lorne shook his head.

"McKay's car got a GPS tracker on it?" the colonel asked, rising to his feet.

"All of them, sir," the sergeant replied quickly. "It doesn't help us, though." He held up a bundle of wires attached to a small gray case. Neither Air Force man had to look too closely to figure it out.

"Covering their tracks," Lorne said with a frustrated shrug. "Genii can't track them."

"Yeah, well, neither can we." Mitchell glanced around and winced at the destruction. Whatever the Genii had hit the place with, it had been big.

Lorne was toying with his phone, twirling it around with cold-clumsy fingers. Teyla had called him from the house's land line within two minutes of the first explosion and had been on the line with him when the second one had hit. She knew he was close by and had rolled out reinforcements, knew that he was the one to contact if and when they were safe. All Lorne had to do was wait. Which, really, was something he was normally very good at. Normally.

Mitchell saw this and gestured for him to start moving. "Wherever they're going, it's not gonna be near here, right? This is basically the middle of nowhere. We need to get someplace closer to civilization."

Lorne's breath left him in a quiet rush. He nodded once and turned on his heel, immediately heading back towards the car. Mitchell was still talking, but not to him, and given the circumstances the colonel would most likely forgive the lack of decorum. He was one of the decent officers like that.

After a moment Mitchell appeared at his side, jangling a set of car keys in his hand. "We're taking one of the SUVs and four Marines. You still good to drive?"

Lorne glanced at the keys and felt himself settle down. He had never before been the kind of person who had to be _doing something_ to feel useful, but now he could definitely understand the mindframe. He smiled grimly and took the keys.

"Yes, sir."

---

The hotel was cheap and filthy. The owner had three tobacco-yellow teeth and stringy gray hair. He spat out a wad of tobacco chew and nearly hit Ronon's foot; four seconds later he had a fractured wrist and a new respect for his customers. There was a brief hitch as they realized they had no way to pay without breaking out the easily-traceable credit cards, until Ronon casually offered up one of his cards that might or might not have been in his real name. They got one room, on the edge of the row, and parked as close to it as they could. There was a ratty bed, only one chair, and a phone that looked as though it hadn't worked in any of their lifetimes.

Sheppard sneered at the bed and yanked the blankets and sheets off, stripping it down to the mattress. He then spread the blanket they'd grabbed from the house over it and helped Teyla settle McKay onto it. Ronon passed over his coat and they laid it over the shivering Keeper. Teyla sat down cross-legged beside the bed, still touching and murmuring to the man. He seemed to be responding to it- his shivering and muttering had gotten noticeably worse during the minute it had taken them to bring him inside, but was better now that Teyla was back. Ronon grabbed the chair and swung it around into position, sitting close enough to the door to reach it in one bound while still being able to see a large chunk of the parking lot out the window. Sheppard grabbed at the phone and began hammering out Lorne's number, snarling and pacing as the phone proved to be uncooperative.

Finally he turned on Teyla, who was watching him with a sharp gaze. "Are you sure Lorne's even close enough to help?"

"I am certain," she said, not breaking from the soft, soothing tone. Her eyes, however, were dark and angry. She was as mad as the other two, she just hid it better. Ronon shifted in his chair impatiently. He wanted to be out there making those bastards suffer, not sitting here waiting for reinforcements. For better or worse, McKay was a friend, and no one hurt Ronon's friends.

"Great. Well, with this piece of crap phone we aren't gonna be calling him." Sheppard threw the phone, receiver and all, into the wall and stared at the resulting hole in the way. None of the three even flinched when a number of cockroaches came scurrying out. "And we took the GPS off the car," Sheppard continued, as if his little tantrum hadn't just happened.

"There are other phones," Ronon said slowly. "In the main lobby. Pay phone in the parking lot too."

Sheppard was already shaking his head before Ronon had finished the first sentence. "No. I don't want us splitting up."

Ronon lifted a brow and glanced over his shoulder, briefly meeting Teyla's gaze. Neither of them said anything, knowing Sheppard had to reach the obvious conclusion by himself. After a moment he did so with an audible growl.

"Fine. I'm going to the lobby. You two stay here."

Ronon snorted and stood, eying the older man. "I'll go."

"No you won't." Sheppard met his gaze squarely, and for the first time Ronon saw the real man beneath the smirks and the drawl, the cool, uncompromising man whom Ronon would follow to the ends of the universe. He'd seen glimpses of this before, but never for more than a second or two. "You stay here and take care of Rodney for me. If something happens, get them out of here."

He wanted to argue, but that was an order and he knew better than to fight those. Instead he nodded and backed off a few steps. Sheppard watched him, the hardness in his eyes shifting to something more like relief, before ducking over to the door. He opened it a crack and froze. Nothing happened. He eased the door open another foot and froze again; still nothing. A moment later he slipped through the opening and the door clicked shut behind him.

Ronon waited a long ninety seconds, in which there was no sign of anything amiss. He then strode over to the windows and yanked them both open, ignoring the hellish squealing. Teyla watched him without comment. As he sat down, she mover herself onto the bed and pressed close to McKay.

"You ever seen anything like that before?" Ronon asked after a long minute, gesturing towards the Keeper as he did so. Teyla shook her head grimly.

"Doctor Beckett will know," she said quietly, tucking the edge of Ronon's coat over her legs. The Specialist glanced at her again. Beckett was a Healer, sure, arguably the best one he'd ever met, but Healers weren't perfect. There was no guarantee Beckett could figure out McKay's problem and even less assurances that he could do anything about it.

Ronon tilted his head to the side and half-stood at the distant jingle of bells. The lobby door had had bells tied to the handle. Sheppard hadn't been in there long enough to call Lorne, even if all he was doing was giving the address. He wandered over to the window and peered out carefully, watching as the familiar loose-limbed figure strolled over to the pay phone in the corner of the parking lot. A moment later he was jogging back towards the room.

Sheppard lifted an eyebrow at the open windows as Ronon let him in but didn't say anything. Instead he commenced a mad hunt for spare change, which ended in a bust. Finally he took a few bills from McKay's wallet and headed back out. Ronon took up his position by the window again, forgoing the chair. He listened to the faint chiming of the bells and waited.

A full minute later, he grabbed his blaster and turned to Teyla. "Something's wrong. I'm going to check it out."

"What?" Teyla asked. Ronon nodded towards the window.

"Went in the lobby and hasn't come out yet."

Anyone else would have been accused of being paranoid. A Specialist's instincts, however, were nothing to scoff at. Teyla waved him over and drew two wards in quick slashing strokes over his wrist. The first he didn't recognize; the second he did, even before she said the activation word and a rush of warmth blew over him. He was out the door before the glow faded. He glanced back once to see her standing just outside, drawing something on the door itself.

From the direction of the lobby came the sharp retort of a gun. Then another. Ronon broke into a run, switching his blaster over to kill as he went. He'd had enough of the Genii making all the moves and pushing them around. Time to go on the offensive.

---

John couldn't help it. He was pissed. The entire day had gone straight to hell in an uncontrollable downward spiral and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He didn't like not being in control. More importantly, he didn't like watching the people around him suffer because he wasn't in control. His mother had once told him that he had a hero complex; he had to be the one who suffered, the one who paid the price. No one else was allowed to know pain. It was arrogant and condescending and even selfish, in an odd way, and right now he would give his right arm to be rid of it.

The trip back to the lobby was made all the longer for his self-castigating, and he didn't immediately notice something was wrong. The bells jingled again, and god he was two seconds away from shooting the damn things because they were just one more irritant in a whole day hellbent on driving him mad and they might very well be the final straw. He glanced over to the front counter, where the motel owner had previously been sitting. The man's attitude had done a sharp one eighty after a quick conversation with Ronon. John had his suspicions about exactly what that conversation had entailed, but neither man was talking. The man was gone. John felt himself tense up, fingers curling around the bills he'd been about to exchange for coins, and dropped his free hand to the butt of the Genii woman's gun.

Under the strong smell of tobacco and the faint hint of old urine was a new scent, the new-penny smell of fresh blood. A lot of it. He dropped the money and pulled the gun in one smooth motion, sidestepping away from the glass door and putting his back against the wall as he carefully peered around. There, just barely peeking around the counter, was the edge of a dark stain on the carpet. He swore mentally and took a half-step forward.

There were three doorways in the lobby, including the door leading outside. One he could see through; it led to a sort of employee lounge. He couldn't tell if there was someone in the small room but went with his gut instinct in that it was empty. The other doorway was on the wall to his right, leading into- if he remembered correctly- a long hallway that ran behind the row of rooms. He had no idea where the hallway led to and didn't care. Something in him was screaming _trap_ and given earlier events he was inclined to listen. He edged back over to the outside door, pushing it open slowly with one foot as he kept the gun up and ready-

The blond Genii woman exploded up from behind the counter like a homicidal jack-in-the-box. There was a flash of silver and immediate pain; his right arm promptly went fiery with pain and his suddenly numb hand dropped the gun. He had half a second to register the large knife half-buried in his arm just above his elbow before the woman was flying at him.

She was young and fast and well-trained and- most importantly- immensely pissed. He was- not old, but old_er_- and tired and had once upon a time been well-trained and- just as importantly- equally pissed. He was also bigger than her and had the added bonus of regular sparring matches with a Satedan Specialist. Had it not been for his power, he would have easily ended this fight before it truly began.

Unfortunately for him, his power reacted to the threat the same as it had before: it lashed out. This time, however, he didn't have the strength to back it up, and he found himself on his knees and gasping for breath as the blond slammed back against the counter. She rolled to one side and rose to her feet, grinning dark and feral. Apparently he didn't have the strength to do any real damage this time, and now he was seriously screwed.

The gun was a foot and a half in front of him. He caught sight of it from the corner of his eye but showed no sign of having seen it, instead keeping his gaze steady on those coffee-dark eyes. He wrapped his good hand around the knife and tugged it out carelessly. Technically it was a bad idea, but this was going to be over before any serious effects from the blood loss started kicking in.

The Genii woman dipped a hand down to her waist and produced another knife, bigger and nastier than the one he held. Briefly John stared at it; then he shrugged mentally and lunged.

Pain blazed a new trail up his left side as he rolled away, the knife in his hand copper-bright with blood from three people. His right hand was slick and clumsy and fumbled the knife same as it had the gun. His left was steady as always as he wrapped it around the gun's handle. He hit the ground with his right shoulder and the starburst of agony momentarily sharpened the fuzzy gray world around him.

He rolled with the motion, landing flat on his back with both hands wrapped around the gun, aiming it up at her as she shrieked and spun around. There was a millisecond pause before she was moving again and he had to choose, _now_.

He fired.

---

Carson Beckett had long since found that there were several advantages to being a Healer, especially in the current society. For one, he'd never had to worry about a malpractice suit, because he literally couldn't be wrong. For another, he was in high demand, because while Healing was a common secondary talent it was rarely a person's primary power and a full-blown Healer such as himself, capable of healing physical and mental wounds, came about approximately once every twenty years. He could request an assignment with any hospital in the civilized world and get it, he was just that good.

Which didn't quite explain why he _still_ found himself working at an Air Force hospital in northwestern Oregon. Except, that was where his network needed him, and near as he could tell some deity had decided to write 'SUCKER' on his forehead in big bold letters with cosmic ink and people like Elizabeth Weir were very, very good at noticing it. And, of course, people like Rodney McKay who could somehow see it and take advantage of it despite being, though god alone knew how the idiot managed it, completely unaware of it.

Truth be told, Carson was probably Rodney's oldest friend. They'd gone to the same school briefly, before Rodney berated him into accepting his fate and going premed. Carson had rebelled against the abrasive browbeating and went back for a degree in genetics, rooming with Rodney while ignoring the huffing and eye rolling and earning himself the questionable honor of being the first non-relation to voluntarily put up with the man. After that, the two traded e-mails and phone calls several times a day, and even occasionally showed up on the other's door step and making themselves at home for a week or two for no reason more than because they could.

That had been before that damn Stargate broke Rodney's spirit and left him picking up the pieces of himself alone, because he would let no one else get near. Before he had become a Keeper proper and withdrew from the world.

Now Carson found himself standing on the roof of his hospital, heart in his throat and eyes scanning the cloudy sky, listening for the familiar beat of helicopter blades. Major Lorne had called several hours ago and warned him that they were bringing in five people, two badly injured and one that would fit neatly into the 'WTF' column. Carson was too professional to ask about Rodney in specific, but he knew that the Keeper was one of them. Rodney just attracted too much trouble not to be. Plus, news of the destruction of his house had spread through the network like wildfire, and Carson simply couldn't imagine that ending well for Rodney.

He felt the thumping beat of the chopper blades before he heard them and retreated across the roof, standing just inside the open door. Behind him, Elizabeth had wrapped both arms around her torso and was staring across the slate-gray sky with worried eyes. Part of him was angry with her for not Knowing this was coming. Another part quietly whispered that maybe she had, and maybe she had also Known that this _had_ to happen. He refused to acknowledge either.

The helicopter had the familiar Air Force logo and a young-ish pilot with the bearing of an officer of respectable rank. He looked vaguely familiar; however, Carson had eyes only for the passengers. Teyla Emmagen unfolded herself, dropping gracefully to the ground and immediately turning around to help with the others. After her came a long, lean mountain of a man, who could only be the infamous Ronon Dex.

Carson did a quick scan for injuries on both of them and found none; he ducked his head under the lazily spinning blades and ran over to the chopper.

A young woman sat in the seat, one hand pressing a blood-stained bundle of cloth against her side. Her eyes were blank and she was staring straight ahead like a marionette with its puppeteer missing. On her right arm was a long line of wards drawn in red ink. Carson shot Teyla an accusing look and she met his gaze without flinching. No one had told him about one of the injured being a prisoner. They all knew better.

Next to her was a lean man with dark messy hair and hollow eyes. He was exhausted on every front, had put too much of himself into his power and nearly died for it. There was a long line of blood arching across his left ribs and a hastily tied bandage just about his right elbow. His hazel gaze was glassy and he stirred weakly, trying to move. Carson barked an order for him to stay put and yelled over his shoulder for two stretchers.

"Three," Dex corrected, and Carson felt his throat tighten as he turned his gaze to the last passenger. Rodney was curled into as much of a ball as the helicopter's seats would allow him, an oversized coat tucked around him. He was shivering and rocking slightly in his seat and whispering to himself in languages Carson had heard him speak before but couldn't recognize. The Healer turned to face Teyla.

"What the bloody hell happened?" he demanded, perhaps a touch harshly, although all things considered he wasn't in the mood for niceties. Teyla stared him straight in the eye- Christ above, he'd never consciously noted how short she really was until just that moment- and answered without hesitation.

"The Genii attacked Rodney's house. They broke through his power, we know not how. We found him like this during the attack."

Carson glanced over at Rodney. Normally he could tell what was wrong with a person with just a glance. Sometimes he had to push a little deeper. Never had it taken more than a moment's concentration. Right now, he couldn't tell anything about Rodney at all, and it scared him.

"The woman followed us from the house to the motel where Major Lorne and Colonel Mitchell," and here the pilot, who had been standing quietly off to one side, nodded in greeting- "met us. She attacked John. He shot her in self-defense."

"And ye had to ward her?" Carson asked despairingly.

"Don't know what power she has. Couldn't afford her waking up while we were in the air." Dex reached out to grab the woman and hauled her out of the helicopter before Carson could protest his roughness. She went along without protest.

Carson watched as his ER doctors loaded the three up. Behind him, someone cleared their throat, and he turned to face the colonel. Lieutenant Colonel, he saw when he glanced at the man's insignia.

"Who's CO here?" Mitchell asked.

"You are, now, if ye want it," Carson answered. Mitchell grimaced and the Healer turned away. He had patients, there was no time to play this game. Military protocol be damned. Mitchell had done his job by getting them here; he could now be dismissed.

The bullet lodged in the Genii woman's ribs turned out to be the most immediately threatening of the collective injuries. Ignoring Dex, who hovered behind the woman, Carson pulled the bullet out and set about cleaning the wound. He gave it just enough of a heal to prevent infection and moved on. Sheppard didn't even get that much healing; Carson's power drew on both his strength and that of whomever he was healing, and Sheppard simply didn't have any to spare. He ended up hooked up to an IV and a glucose bag. It would be a full twenty-four hours before Carson let him up and moving and another twenty-four before it would be safe for him to even consider using his power. Thankfully he was too out of it to protest and merely blinked sleepily at the people around him. Open-and-shut cases, really. Nothing too difficult.

Rodney, on the other hand, was very different. Carson spent the better part of eight hours running every sort of scan he could think of and ultimately got nowhere. All the scans indicated he was awake and completely aware, yet he quite simply wasn't. His power kept fetching up against a blank wall, like what he felt with General O'Neill. Ultimately he found himself working around to the same conclusion every time.

The answer to Rodney's mystery illness was in one of the back rooms with a bullet hole in her side.

When he reported this to Mitchell, who had reluctantly assumed command of this whole mess, the colonel's eyes tightened and he sighed tiredly. Carson glanced nervously at Teyla and Elizabeth, the other two in the small office. Ronon hadn't been invited to this little powwow; they all had a pretty good idea what he would be suggesting.

"Can you compel her to tell us about this?" Mitchell asked Teyla. The Athosian woman shook her head sadly.

"I cannot. She would have to be fully awake and even then I could not force her to tell the truth."

Mitchell glanced hopefully at Elizabeth, who merely shook her head. He sunk a little lower into his chair and stared at the desk in front of him.

"We can't leave him like that," he said finally. Carson wholeheartedly agreed but didn't say so.

"What other option do we have?" he asked instead, bleak and pessimistic. "I've never seen a thing like this before. It's almost like..."

The other three all shifted a little, looking over at him as he trailed off and stared blankly at the wall. Teyla started to say something but Mitchell waved her quiet, sitting forward and staring intensely at the Healer.

"Bloody hell," Carson said finally. "I'm an idiot."

"Maybe," Mitchell said before the two women could speak. "What is it?"

"It's obvious if ye stop and think about it, especially if you think about the people who attacked him. What's the main difference between us and the Genii?"

"The Genii aren't natives of Earth?" Elizabeth tried after a moment. Carson nodded.

"Exactly." He shot to his feet and, ignoring the confused looks, all but bolted out the door. After a moment he doubled back. "Has anyone called Jeannie yet?"

Judging by the guilty looks from the two females, that was a no. Carson made as if to leave again but Mitchell managed to catch him before he was gone.

"Wait! What the hell are you talking about?"

The Healer paused, then took pity on them. "The Genii didn't attack Rodney himself, they attacked his power. No one on Earth can do that because no one on Earth has needed to."

"The Genii, however, are constantly waging war on other worlds, worlds full of people who have power, so they've picked up a few tricks," the colonel finished. "All right, so that's how they did it, now what did they do? And can you fix it?"

"Not me," Carson shrugged. "But Jeannie can. She's family."

"Fine. Jeannie can fix it. Now, for the last time, what is wrong with him?"

"They've found a way to turn his power in on itself," Carson explained. "It's been turned completely inside-out. Instead of protecting a physical area from all outside forces, it's keeping him trapped inside himself."

Mitchell muttered something Carson would never have said in the presence of women. Elizabeth pulled her cell phone out. Teyla stood and moved over to the Healer, resting a light hand on his arm.

"He is aware, then? Of what is happening around him?"

"Aye, most likely," Carson agreed. Teyla nodded once and ducked out. There was no point in asking where she was going. He didn't try to stop her; right now the best any of them could do for Rodney was to let the people he trusted most watch over him. He glanced at Elizabeth, making the call no sister ever wanted to get, and quickly left again. Mitchell was close on his heels.

"I hope you're right, doc," he said solemnly. Carson sighed.

"So do I, lad," he said, mostly to himself. "So do I."


End file.
